FRANCE: Raffarin on the ropes as strikes resume

Analysis

The government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin is increasingly unpopular with public sector workers, and especially with the teaching unions who have been at the forefront of recent strikes. A series of policies have formed the basis of current opposition:

1. Decentralisation.Decentralisation was a key promise of the incoming Raffarin government a year ago (see FRANCE: Raffarin cautious on labour, pension reform - July 5, 2002), and a constitutional amendment passed earlier this year promised local and regional authorities the right to 'experiment' with local measures outside the strict framework of national law:
   • The most controversial element of the measures currently proposed is the transfer from civil service status (enjoyed by most education employees) to local and regional authority employment of roughly 100,000 non-teaching education staff, including ancillary workers and school doctors, psychologists and social workers. French teachers, as well as retaining a strong ideological attachment to a centralised, nationwide education system, fear that these employees may, under local and regional authority control, be redeployed and lost altogether to the education sector.
   • An additional element is university reform, which aims to give more autonomy to universities and to pool the resources of different universities in the same region. It is unpopular with both faculty and students because of the perceived danger it represents for smaller universities in medium-sized towns and because of the suggested role to be given to local employers in the definition of university programmes.

2. Pension reform.The pensions reform involved, first and foremost, a lengthening of the contribution period required to enjoy full pension rights. From 2008, a full 40 years of contributions will be required of public-sector workers, a period which will be extended to 41 years in 2012 and 42 years in 2020. At the same time, contribution rates will rise by 2-3% from 2008. The base period for calculating public-sector pensions will also be extended from the last six months to the last three years of work, entailing a drop in their value.

   However, the reform is also remarkable for what it does not include:

   • There is no large-scale move to pension funds. President Jacques Chirac has given his personal guarantee that the principles of the country's pay-as-you-go system will be maintained.
   • There are no changes to 'special' pension regimes of key groups such as rail and power workers, whose industrial action in 1995 did irreparable damage to the last attempt at pension reform.
   • There is no attack in principle on the right to retire at 60 established in 1981, although few workers will have sufficient contributions to be able to do this on a full pension.
3. Budgetary austerity.The pension, and to some extent, education reform is being driven by the growing need for budgetary austerity, in a context of poor economic growth and public-sector deficits rising towards 4% of GDP (see FRANCE: Deficit under attack as growth evaporates - April 3, 2003). The education sector has faced the abolition of some 25,000 ancillary classroom assistant posts, and while some two-thirds of these may be replaced in a new scheme, the details of this are far from clear.

Pension consultation.The government engaged in a wide-ranging round of consultations on the pensions reform with France's trade unions, in the apparent hope of reaching a consensus based on preserving the essentials of France's pay-as-you-go system, seen both as a symbol of solidarity between generations and as a more reliable structure than funded pensions. These consultations stand in sharp contrast to the brusque presentation of attempted reforms in 1995, and the government conceded that minimum-wage earners with a full record of contributions would enjoy a pension of 85% of final salary, and that workers with 40 years' contributions who had started work at 16 would enjoy retirement rights from age 58.

However, the trade unions' reaction to the overall package has been largely negative. Of the five main union confederations, only one, representing managers, has been consistent in its approval, while another (the CFDT) approved the package after negotiation but is not being followed by its own rank-and-file. The others call for withdrawal of the whole package and for new negotiations without preconditions.

Industrial action.In response in particular to the pensions reform proposals and the plans for the change of status of education support staff, unions have mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators during 'days of action' on May 13 and 25, resulting in large-scale disruption to the transport system and education. A further 'day of action' tomorrow will cause additional disruption and the movement may become prolonged or widen to include private-sector workers (such as truckers). Opposition is likely to be at its strongest between tomorrow and the presentation of the pensions bill to parliament next week.

The reasons for militancy are both general and specific to the present context:

• France's divided unions, with low overall membership but considerable strength in the public sector, are frequently inclined to outbid one another for fear of losing members, and have often had difficulty in getting deals with government accepted by their rank-and-file.
• The teaching profession sees itself as attacked on a range of fronts by the government, faces increasingly difficult working conditions, and has lost all trust in the Raffarin initiatives.
• Despite government reassurances that they are not affected by the pensions package, transport workers see their 'special regimes' as next in line for reform and have proved almost as militant as the teachers.

Meanwhile, public opinion is fluid. Polls last week indicated falling confidence in the government's capacity to bring its reform plans to a successful conclusion, and about 60% support for the teachers' strikes. Attempts by the Right, and especially Chirac's party, to mobilise opposition to the strikes have fallen conspicuously flat. Nonetheless, successive polls have indicated widespread acceptance of the need for pension system reform and that unions would face significant public opposition to radical attempts at disruption, such as the sabotage of the baccalaureat (high-school leaving examination).

Government strategy.The government -- unwise to have attempted so many difficult reforms simultaneously -- has been both conciliatory and tough towards the strikers, although this ambivalence may have resulted from poor coordination rather than deliberate strategy:

• Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon has stressed that the negotiation phase on pensions reform is over, while Education Minister Luc Ferry has indicated willingness to use police to ensure that baccalaureat exams are not disrupted.
• A series of government-union 'round tables' is planned, with a first meeting today covering education decentralisation. However, while the university decentralisation plans have already been postponed (possibly indefinitely), further government concessions would probably be interpreted as a sign of weakness and an encouragement to further action. Elsewhere, Raffarin has little room for manoeuvre on pensions and no scope for budgetary sweeteners.

The government will be hoping for a slow weakening of the strike movement and pensions reform adoption. If something approaching a general strike does materialise, Raffarin will seek to play on the continuing and real divisions in the union movement and hope that public opinion will shift decisively against the militants as a result of large-scale disruption of examinations, of transport, or of both. The arrival of the July holiday period would render education strikes irrelevant, transport strikes particularly unpopular, and workers of most types harder to mobilise. However, this outcome would not be decisive. It would practically ensure that a ragged pattern of strikes would resume in the autumn, and that further reform plans, for example to the health system, would face a new large-scale mobilisation.