President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed this week that there would be ‘no surrender’ amid the widest ranging strikes since he took office, says Angelique Chrisafis in The Guardian.
‘Black Tuesday’ saw France brought to a near-standstill as a third of its five million public-sector staff – including railwaymen, civil servants, teachers and nurses – protested against Sarkozy’s plans to streamline the country’s bloated, costly public sector.
While French strikes are common enough, this is the first time for 12 years that Paris has been so effectively paralysed. Transport workers are angry at plans to eliminate special retirement privileges (retirement with full benefits at age 50) that the private sector does not enjoy.
They are not the only ones to benefit from such ‘special regimes’ dating back decades, or even centuries, says Matthew Campbell in The Sunday Times. The regimes affect 10% of the public sector, or about 500,000 workers and 1.1 million retirees. “Yet they cost the state about £3bn a year and account for most of the deficit in the overall pension system”.
As Sarkozy puts it, the French approved these reforms when they elected him. He is also well aware of the risk he is taking by implementing them, says The Independent. Jacques Chirac’s prime minister, Alain Juppe, vowed to do precisely what Sarkozy is doing, 12 years ago, but after weeks of transport gridlock that cost France 0.3% of its GDP, the reforms were defeated and his government fell. Sarkozy has the benefit of hindsight, and it is clear from his autobiography that he has thought “long and hard about his tactics”. In his favour, he has a “popular touch that the haughty technocrat, Juppe, lacked”.
He also has far more public support, says Campbell. Some union leaders have condemned the strikes, and a “frustrated public… tore into the protesters for preventing them from getting to work”. The French have “realised they have to work for a living” and many want to. It’s easy to forget that the France of the 35-hour-week, afraid of capitalism and globalisation, co-exists with another “highly dynamic and entrepreneurial France”, home to some of the world’s top companies. The outlook has seldom seemed “rosier” for corporate France.
That’s not quite true, says Ben Hall in the FT. Despite a strong rebound in the third quarter of 2007, France is feeling the pinch from a strengthening euro, higher fuel and food prices, a cooling housing market and tighter credit conditions. The cost of the strikes is estimated to be £286m a day, adding to public gloom and employers’ nervousness.
That’s why it is so important for Sarkozy to win this battle, says Campbell. Over the past 15 years, French per capita GDP has slipped from seventh to 17th in the world, while public debt has ballooned to 66% of GDP. If this carries on, the country could “in effect go bankrupt”. The fight over special regimes is about much more than just one reform: it could prove as much of a watershed as Thatcher’s victory over the miners, allowing Sarkozy to implement other reforms, such as abolition of the 35-hour-week and labour market deregulation.
Much is at stake, agrees The Independent, and Sarkozy cannot take victory for granted. If he toughs it out, he will pave the way for modernisation; if he fails, “his authority will be permanently weakened”. This is a “real trial of strength”.