06.25.03

On French Strikes

For the past few weeks, there have been large strikes taking place in France. The proximate cause of the strikes is a proposal for pension reform and school decentralization, but there is a lot of history involved. For a while, it looked like the June school exams would have to be postponed, although teachers worked out a compromise with the government at the last minute. Nevertheless, the strikes have been very disruptive.

I considered sitting down with an old issue of the Nouvel Observateur, a glass of Liberty wine, and some half-remembered anectodal evidence from my short stay in France to write a post about these strikes, strikes in general, and what they say about the difference in European and American attitudes to government. After all, massive labor unrest is fairly common in Europe, and really rare in America. Or, to use equally slanted language, total worker apathy is fairly common in the United States, and really rare in Europe. There had to be an interesting reason for the difference.

But that post sounded like a lot of work to write. So instead I sat down and wrote an email to Laurent, at http://navire.net, asking him for help. Laurent is one of my very favorite French bloggers: his site is never doctrinaire, he writes with wit and intelligence, and he thinks things through. I cunningly disguised my laziness as a desire for cultural understanding:

I would like to explain to my American readers where the French got their habit of going on strike. When I lived in France, it seemed to me like the slightest reform that affected civil servants would touch off a general strike. I found this very interesting as a social and political phenomenon. As you can imagine, there is nothing like it here in the United States. Here, we're more likely to go overboard in the other direction: no social safety net, not many unions.
If you could find the time to write a sort of mini-primer on the subject for us Americans, I would love to publish it on Idle Words.

Laurent not only wrote back - he set up a discussion thread on his own blog for others to add their thoughts, which I thought was extremely kind of him. And devilish! Delegated answers for a delegated question, especially since he left for a long incommunicado sailing trip the next day. Truly a man to emulate and admire.

For now, I want to present to you Laurent's response(s); when the discussion thread fills out, I'll translate some of the comments, too. Meanwhile, if you're wondering at the unusual quality of the translation, it's because Gail Armstrong at openbrackets.com was kind enough to perform reconstructive surgery on my mangling of Laurent's prose. She did this in spite of triple-digit temperatures in her house, in spite of the fact that I was asking her to do for free what she ordinarily charges money for, and in spite of the fact that I am just an intellectual moocher out on the ether. If you've never read openbrackets.com, I advise you to switch blogs immediately.

Here what Laurent wrote:

Here are several lines of argument, in no particular order:

1. The French are a Latin people. They prefer to shout before coming to an agreement.
2. Our society is not inclined to social dialogue.
3. There are two kinds of strike: a strike against job cuts, often directed against a specific company, and a corporatist strike in defense of social benefits in a given sector, and more rarely sectional claims.
4. There are 2.3 million civil servants in France [!! - MC], for a population of 60 million.
   [ Ill add, for the sake of perspective, that 25% of Frances workforce is employed by the government in one way or another. Yikes! - Gail]
5. Our history is replete with widespread, eruptive social movements. For example, the Revolution, the Paris Commune in 1871, and the events of May 1968.
6. In France, there is a rule called the rule of acquired benefits, which means that once they've been acquired, social benefits become non-negotiable.
7. This impression of France is a caricature: France isn't the only European country to have strikes. Remember the broad and violent protests in Germany and Great Britain. What comes to mind in particular are the IG-Metal union in Germany, and the recent hardline strike by British firefighters.
8. Strikers take a certain "delight" in going on strike, it gives them a sense of being seen and heard (at last), speaking out from within a stagnant, deaf and blind structure, one which, in any case, allows for little communication.
9. Strikes are the heart of a power struggle between the unions and the government. The unions, which are losing steam, see strikes as a way of inflicting damage and of affirming their power.
10. There exists a culture of conflict among union members. The "Worker's Struggle" (Lutte Ouvrière) movement being the epitome, headed by Arlette Laguiller who still dreams of the "big night" when they'll string up all the bourgeois capitalists.
11. Most civil servants don't live in a competitive and changing environment, and are incapable of accepting the very idea of progress and change.
12. The French are paranoid: any reform is necessarily designed to screw them over.
13. We only experience life through power struggles and ideas of class that, although outdated elsewhere, are still very prevalent in French society.
14. The French are self-centered. They aren't aware of the level of social benefits they enjoy (worker's rights, health care, paid vacations, etc.) and many foreigners envy us this, while we can't stop complaining. It's the law of always wanting more. How soon before it's a 20-hour work week for 40 hours' pay + pension plan + two months paid vacation? Americans would be happy to get a tenth of what we already have (naturally: they have nothing).
15. In France we have the right to strike, and not everyone [in the world] enjoys that right.

Please note that I don't necessarily endorse all of the ideas listed here, they are only food for thought. Theres no point insulting me or calling me a Madelinist [Alain Madelin, a Chirac crony, head of several key ministries over the years - labour, industry and finance - supported massive job cuts at Michelin, etc. -Gail ] (help!).

[To his readers] So in your opinion, why all these strikes in France? Is it a specifically French trait? Is it negative or positive?

Looking through the list of possible suspects, numbers 1, 12 or 14 all sounded suspiciously like general human nature to me. As for number 2, Gail and I performed the email equivalent of staring at each other slack-jawed when we read that, because "social dialogue" is all you ever hear about in the French press. It's like complaining that USA Today doesn't have a comprehensive weather report.

I was intrigued by the historical focus in many of Laurent's other points. More than anything, I remember a distinct sensation of being out of my depth when hearing about strikes or social conflict in France. It was a sensation very like being in the middle of someone else's family argument - there are deep subcurrents, allusions to past events, the feeling that what's being argued about is a stand-in for the true issues. There's an overwhelming desire to go into the corner and hide.

So rather than mouthing off pointlessly, I would like to defer to an expat who actually knows the country well, who has been raising a family and dealing with things like dental appointments, school enrollment, income tax, and Dean Allen - issues I never had to face during my short life there.

Ladies and gentlemen, once again, please give it up for Gail Armstrong:

I think the social structure would be worse off without unions than with, but its true that here in France, the country occasionally comes to a halt over rather picayune griefs. Workers aren't aware of how good they have it.

I support the ongoing teachers strike even if my daughter had virtually no school for the entire month of May (It wasn't a problem for me because I work at home, but at the time I thought often of parents, particularly single parents, who would have had to juggle their time and find care for their kids at the last minute.)

They had very legitimate claims, and I am appalled that these claims are falling on deaf ears. A good and well-funded educational structure is crucial to any country's future health.

The teachers' pay, by the way, will be docked for every day they went on strike. "We'll eat boiled potatoes every night," one of them said, "but we will not give up the fight."

Personally, I think teachers and street cleaners should be overpaid; ministers not so much.

I have little sympathy for the civil service here, I'm afraid, no doubt due in part to the bureaucratic nightmares I've suffered at its hand. It's over-populated and under-motivated, a hulking, inefficient machine.

The social benefits are good if you're a salaried worker (and outrageously generous if you're a government worker), but anyone going it freelance pays roughly 60% of their earnings back to the government, and enjoys few of the perks of the socialist system, which is obscene and has killed many an initiative and put a lot of freelancers out of business.

...

But of all European nations, I don't think strikes are by any means a purely French phenomenon (yikes, take a look at Italy), but it's true that the French have always been an easy target for criticism; its recent vilification merely facile: a lot of pots shooting at kettles because it makes them feel white.

Gail and Laurent are both right to say I singled France out unfairly in my question. Strikes are a European phenomenon, they have deep historical roots there, and I didn't want to imply that France was the worst offender of the bunch. It is, however, representative of a very different balance between government and business than we're ever likely to see here. Whether that balance is worth emulating is a question I find really difficult.

Thanks again to Laurent and Gail for letting me quote them at such length, and for taking the time to answer my questions. In a day or two I'll translate the comments from Laurent's site as well, and maybe figure out something of my own to say. In the meantime, keep those why-are-Americans-so-reluctant-to-stick-it-to-the-Man letters coming!

View this post in context