Another case of downsizing

A week o French government listen, asks Jeremy Landor in Paris

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Trade unions are responding to a new offensive by a right-wing French government -- now dominated by Nicolas Sarkozy as economy and finance minister -- which wants to further dismantle the welfare state and deregulate employment. If Sarko, as he is popularly known, has his way many more people will be ejected from the security of public sector employment to find themselves in precarious jobs with fewer rights and low wages. This year more than 7,000 public sector jobs are to go.

President Chirac is managing to face two directions at once. At the recent G8 summit in Davos he pleaded help for the world's poor, financed by a tax on international financial transactions, thumbing his nose at the Americans by condemning a kind of globalisation which threatens to destroy social and environmental equilibrium and crush the weakest.

But at home Chirac wants to reduce taxes on the rich and cut public services. Another world is possible, but not for the majority of French citizens. Recent figures show an increase in the six per cent of the population living below the poverty line, and unemployment rising during the last three years to 9.5 per cent.

Ma and Japan. Its companies are so rich that they are able to buy back their own shares to raise their value. Between 2000 and 2003 French companies spent 56 billion euros on buying back their own shares, rather than investing. Yet the powerful French employers' federation, MEDEF, has pushed the government to cut wage increases, cut pension rights, cut unemployment benefits and reduce spending on public services. At the same time, MEDEF insists that working time must increase and that companies should be freed to sack employees at will.

Against this, the voice of the trade unions seems to be a cry in the wilderness. But plans to privatise some public services, failure to properly fund others, and the government's hard line on pay demands brought out larger numbers than usual.

Around 300,000 people throughout France, working in hospitals, schools, postal services, railways, and the state electricity and gas suppliers, took to the streets.

The le that there is a union representative in their company or workplace, whose help they can seek even if they are not members.

The by a new union movement, SUD (solidarité, unité, démocratie). It has attracted workers who see the two main union centres, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT -- formerly close to the Communist Party, the oldest and still the most militant of the confederations), and the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT -- more conciliatory and close to the Socialists) as too bureaucratic and unresponsive to their demands.

Reform of the health service points to a downgrading of the service for those on lower incomes.

Access to specialist physicians has previously been available to anyone who felt they needed a consultation and fees have been reimbursed by the state -- in full for those on welfare benefits. Now, anyone over 16 has to see their local doctor -- general pra up, or if the fees will be within the limits of repayments by social security." Opposition political parties have accused the government of planning a two-tier system "where only those who have the means will be able to get rapid access to a specialist."

Psychiatric hospitals have been particularly hard hit by the government's refusal to fund the service. Chronic staff shortages mean that nurses have been injured and even murdered because there are not enough of them to restrain violent patients. Marching through the st have to keep the hospital going. We have become security guards. If there were more staff we could be nurses," one nurse said.

Some lo from who are most in need of a meal."

Part of the government's offensive is to take away an employee's right to reduce their working week to 35 hours in negotiation with employers. The reform was brought in by a Socialist government five years ago to tackle unemployment by helping employers create more jobs. Many have chosen to reduce their working hours and their wages proportionately. But although unemployment is growing again, Prime Minister Raffarin is arguing, "allow those who want to earn more to work more."

This is, according to Bernard Thibauld of the CGT, is a distortion of reality: "Many employees know very well that they do not choose their working hours. If it was the case, I do not understand how millions of employees in this country are restricted to part-time work and forced into low-paid jobs. There are millions of workers who would like to be able to work more just to earn their living, not to mention the unemployed," he said in a radio interview last December. The Raffarin government has reduced overtime pay in small companies with less than 20 employees from 25 per cent to only 10 per cent more per hour.

Sarkozy is supported in his reforms by a commission led by the former director general of the International Monetary Fund between 1987 and 2000, Michel Camdessus. The very same who promoted structural adjustment in developing countries: meaning reductions in public sector employment, reduced health and education budgets, the privatisation of public companies and services, with insistence on international debt repayments.

Camdessus presented Sarkozy with the report last October which is based on the classic neo-liberal prescription of more flexibility. This means reducing the minimum wage, attacking unemployment benefit, cutting public sector employment. All in the name of competitiveness and stronger growth in GDP, but with wealth concentrated at the top: the report criticises taxing the rich as "penalising investment and the expected transfer of inheritance". Companies should not be prevented from sacking people when they want to: "To boost employment and social inclusion, cuts in employment must be accepted when they are shown to be necessary."

Disillusionment with the government could spell disaster in the referendum for a European constitution to be held in June. The constitution is widely seen as entrenching the same neo-liberal values which have proved so unpopular.

The strikes and mass mobilisation called by the unions for 5 February are seen as the real test of workers; power to influence the government.