"Nous ne cederons pas, nous ne reculerons pas"

The public sector sister trade union to UNISON in France, the CGT and others are in battle with right wing French President Nicolas Sarkozy over pensions. He declared yesterday "We shall not give way, we shall not retreat". Is he having his Maggie Thatcher moment?

While on paper at least, the unions seem up against it, a newly elected President who had reform of public sector pensions in his manifesto and it appears marginal public support for taking a “tough line”.

However, this is France! Here in a republic founded on barricades and revolution where there is a tradition of successful street protest blocking change. Street protest last year was able to overturn a law passed overwhelmingly by the National Assembly which reduced employment protection for young people.

Of course, soon after this, France elected the conservative Sarkozy, despite a very good Socialist opponent. The same thing happened after the famous protests of 1968.

I can’t really comment on the pensions issue itself since I haven’t seen any real independent analysis of what the real concerns are, apart from an assumption in the media that since this is France and it is about the public sector, the unions must be in the wrong. After the nonsense and misrepresentation about the Brit public sector pensions last year I won’t believe anything the mainstream media puts out about French pensions.

There is one other thing. I have posted before about the crazy (or perhaps not) contradiction that in France, the trade unions can influence the political agenda on certain issues by being able to organise massive street protests despite having appallingly low membership levels. France has a trade union density of only 9% compared to the UK 29%.

Despite relatively very few members, the French trade unions can mobilise large numbers of people on the streets. Often their demo’s in Paris have more people on them than the total number of members in that union across the country.

Finally, I may be wrong, but French right wing politicians have a well deserved reputation of talking tough in public yet being pragmatic in practice. While the petty bourgeoisie Thatcher hatred the trade unions so much that she would have risked everything to defeat them. Viva la difference!