November 2007 strikes in France
Encyclopedia
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
were a series of general strike
General strike
A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
s, mostly in the public sector
Public sector
The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...
, which started on 13 November 2007. The strike was over President
President of the French Republic
The President of the French Republic colloquially referred to in English as the President of France, is France's elected Head of State....
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
's and Prime Minister François Fillon
François Fillon
François Charles Armand Fillon is the Prime Minister of France. He was appointed to that office by President Nicolas Sarkozy on 17 May 2007. He served initially until 13 November 2010 when he resigned from being prime minister before a planned cabinet reshuffle.On 14 November 2010, Sarkozy...
's attempt to reduce early retirement benefits for 500,000 public employees. Sarkozy had stated that pension reform is the first in a series of measures designed to roll back protections for trade unions in France, and both unions and Sarkozy saw the pension strikes as a key political test.
Cause of the strikes
France's national labour law permits workers in certain hazardous or difficult professions to retire with full pension benefits after 37.5 years rather than 40 years. The Sarkozy administration claims the current pension system allows some public sector workers to retire as early as age 50. The government calculated the cost of these early-retirement benefits at $7 billion a year.President Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy
Nicolas Sarkozy is the 23rd and current President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra. He assumed the office on 16 May 2007 after defeating the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal 10 days earlier....
feels that his victory in the 2007 presidential election
French presidential election, 2007
The 2007 French presidential election, the ninth of the Fifth French Republic was held to elect the successor to Jacques Chirac as president of France for a five-year term.The winner, decided on 5 and 6 May 2007, was Nicolas Sarkozy...
gave him a mandate to carry out labour reforms, stating "I said before I was elected what I would do," and "we will do these reforms because they have to be done." He declared the strikes a test of political will. "I will pursue these reforms to the end," he said in a speech to the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
. "Nothing will blow me off course."
Prime Minister
Prime Minister of France
The Prime Minister of France in the Fifth Republic is the head of government and of the Council of Ministers of France. The head of state is the President of the French Republic...
François Fillon
François Fillon
François Charles Armand Fillon is the Prime Minister of France. He was appointed to that office by President Nicolas Sarkozy on 17 May 2007. He served initially until 13 November 2010 when he resigned from being prime minister before a planned cabinet reshuffle.On 14 November 2010, Sarkozy...
attacked the unions for depriving millions of French people "of their fundamental freedom—the freedom of movement and even perhaps to work."
Bernard Thibault
Bernard Thibault
Bernard Thibault, born in 1959, is the current secretary of the Confédération Générale du Travail , a French workers' union. He represents the moderate wing of the CGT, as opposed to the more radical wing noted in Marseilles' trade union....
, the secretary of the Confédération générale du travail
Confédération générale du travail
The General Confederation of Labour is a national trade union center, the first of the five major French confederations of trade unions.It is the largest in terms of votes , and second largest in terms of membership numbers.Its membership decreased to 650,000 members in 1995-96 The General...
(CGT), France's second-largest labour union, compared the strikes to the 1995 strikes in France
1995 strikes in France
The 1995 strikes in France were a series of general strikes in France, mostly in the public sector in late 1995. The strikes received great popular support despite paralyzing the country's transportation infrastructure...
, saying, "The general discontent is as strong as then," and "We're not trying to copy 1995, but the strike could last."
Beginning of the strikes
SNCF
The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...
rail workers and Paris Métro
Paris Métro
The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...
personnel became the first group of workers to commence their strike. Labour Minister Xavier Bertrand
Xavier Bertrand
Xavier Bertrand is a French politician and Minister of Labour, Employment and Health. He was Minister of Health for almost two years in Dominique de Villepin's government under President Jacques Chirac, then Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity in François Fillon's second government...
met with union leaders on 14 November 2007 to try to find a resolution. On the first day of the strike, only 90 out of 700 TGV
TGV
The TGV is France's high-speed rail service, currently operated by SNCF Voyages, the long-distance rail branch of SNCF, the French national rail operator....
trains were running, and other rail services were reduced sharply. In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, the Métro was only running at 20% capacity and bus services only at 15%. However, some Métro lines experienced fewer disruptions than expected, leading some observers to conclude that support for the strike was not as strong as unions claimed.
30% of the workers of the 70% state owned Gaz de France
Gaz de France
Gaz de France was a French company which produced, transported and sold natural gas around the world, especially in France, its main market. The company was also particularly active in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European countries. Through its part-owned Belgian subsidiary SPE...
and Électricité de France
Électricité de France
Électricité de France S.A. is the second largest French utility company. Headquartered in Paris, France, with €65.2 billion in revenues in 2010, EDF operates a diverse portfolio of 120,000+ megawatts of generation capacity in Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.EDF is one of...
went on strike on 13 November, reducing the national electricity production by 8000 MW (roughly 10%). There were no fears of power outages. The Opéra National de Paris, a group subject to the special retirement plan (régimes spéciaux de retraite), also cancelled performances. However in a short interview granted to the BBC the director claimed these cancellations were due to insufficient customers because of travel difficulties incurred by the strikes.
In addition, some university students demonstrated and blocked the entrances to their campuses in opposition to plans to allow private funding of Universities. In the University of Nanterre students were forcefully removed by riot police, however this was censored on the national news. On 13 November the newspaper Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
(which is owned by Sarkozy supporter Serge Dassault
Serge Dassault
Serge Dassault is a French entrepreneur and conservative politician. According to Forbes magazine, he was the 96th richest person in the world, with a net worth of $9.3 billion....
) and the cable news channel LCI
La Chaîne Info
La Chaîne Info, or LCI is a French cable news channel. The network provides 24-hour national and global news coverage.-History:LCI was created on June 24, 1994, by Christian Dutoit on behalf of the media group TF1....
reprted that a survey found that about 7 out of 10 people said the strikes were unjustified.
Conclusion of the strikes
Minister of Employment, Social Cohesion and HousingMinister of Social Affairs (France)
The Minister of Social Affairs and Employment The Minister of Social Affairs and Employment The Minister of Social Affairs and Employment (French: Ministre des Affaires sociales et de l'emploi is a cabinet member in the Government of France. The position was originally known as Minister of Labor...
Xavier Bertrand
Xavier Bertrand
Xavier Bertrand is a French politician and Minister of Labour, Employment and Health. He was Minister of Health for almost two years in Dominique de Villepin's government under President Jacques Chirac, then Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Solidarity in François Fillon's second government...
, whose portfolio includes labor relations, held several negotiating sessions with the unions throughout the day on 13 and 14 November. Bertrand told the unions that pension reform was non-negotiable, but proposed a month-long period of negotiations between the unions and each state-controlled agency to discuss ways to minimize the effects on existing workers.
Some improvements in mass transit also occurred on 14 November. The main Métro commuter lines remained shut, while other lines ran between 20 and 50 percent of normal capacity. However, only a third of Paris buses were running. The Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that 150 of the 700 high-speed TGV
TGV
The TGV is France's high-speed rail service, currently operated by SNCF Voyages, the long-distance rail branch of SNCF, the French national rail operator....
trains were running, an increase of 60 over the day before.
On 18 November, a demonstration was held by pro-reform and anti-strike organizations in Paris. They gathered between 8,000 and 20,000 protesters against public transportation strikers, calling them "hostage takers".
La Poste (France)
La Poste is the mail service of France, which also operates postal services in the French Overseas Departments of Réunion, Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana, and the territorial collectivities of Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Mayotte...
and newspaper printers. The printers were also protesting against reorganisations within the printing industry. Air traffic control employees were also on strike, causing delays of 45 minutes on flights from the Parisian airports according to ADP
Aéroports de Paris
Aéroports de Paris or ADP is the airport authority that owns and manages the fourteen civil airports and airfields in the Île-de-France area. Among its notable airports are Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Orly Airport and Le Bourget Airport...
.
During the night from 20 November to 21 November, the TGV
TGV
The TGV is France's high-speed rail service, currently operated by SNCF Voyages, the long-distance rail branch of SNCF, the French national rail operator....
network was sabotaged by fires, further adding to the delays. Approximately 30 kilometres of track were damaged, both the unions and the President condemned these acts.
On 21 November, the CGT called for the strikes to stop as the government has allegedly agreed to negotiate. An opinion poll published in the Figaro estimates 2/3 of the French are against the strike, and the Ministry of Economy declared that the strike was costing the French economy €400 million a day and SNCF €100 million a day. According to the SNCF
SNCF
The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...
, the operator of the national train lines 23% of their staff were still on strike, while the RATP operating the Paris Métro, and some suburban trains claimed 16% of their staff were on strike. However the service on the Parisian trains and Métro was still below 25% because most of the strikers were train drivers.
On 21 November the number of strikers continued to diminish, and talks were engaged in-between the government and the unions.
Strikes continued on 22 November with the numbers of strikers still diminishing, and public transport was still heavily affected. Following a day of ongoing talks with the government, 42 of the 45 union committees voted to stop the strike, and the RATP and SNCF
SNCF
The SNCF , is France's national state-owned railway company. SNCF operates the country's national rail services, including the TGV, France's high-speed rail network...
announced almost normal levels of service for 23 November, with in-between 70 and 100% of public transport services running. It is said talks could last for a month.
Planned strikes
Several additional strikes were also planned. Among them are:- 29 November 2007 - Employees of the justice systemJustice in FranceIn France, judges are considered civil servants exercising one of the sovereign powers of the state, and, accordingly, only French citizens are eligible for judgeship. France's independent judiciary enjoys special statutory protection from the executive branch...
.
Telecommunications workers and bankers have also scheduled strikes.