FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy, now seven months in office, may be busy trying to make his mark with a fresh foreign policy, including a rapprochement with the United States, but for the moment he has troubles closer home to worry about.
Yesterday French rail and energy workers began an open-ended strike to protest planned radical changes to their generous pension plans. Next week teachers, students, civil servants, magistrates and even opera singers are due also go on strike. Last month there was travel chaos when Air France workers struck.
The precise nature of the grievances varies but all are underpinned by the consequences of Sarkozy’s determination to balance France’s budget by cutting out what he characterizes as over generous pay and conditions to the large state sector. The last time a French government attempted to slash its costs this way was in 1995 and three weeks of industrial action by transport and public workers forced the withdrawal of the plans.
Sarkozy no doubt feels he is on stronger political ground since long overdue reforms were a key plank of his election platform. Indeed polls last week suggest that more than 60 percent of the French approve of the changes he wants to make. The government has homed in on the case of train drivers who under present arrangements retire aged 50 with a full salary pension for the rest of their lives. These terms stem from the 1940s when the work was seen to be both dangerous and tiring. The view of most Frenchmen used to be that anyone who could land such a job was fortunate. But attitudes have changed as it has become apparent that France along with other European countries such as Germany and Italy can no longer afford such open-handedness.
This is, therefore, a naked test between the will of the voters as expressed in the mandate they gave Sarkozy this spring and the street power that has for so long characterized French politics. Sarkozy is too smart a politician to have embarked on this serious confrontation without a game plan. Maybe by threatening substantial change, he can win by careful compromises that spread the changes out over a longer period but still in the end have the same budgetary effects. What Sarkozy cannot do without destroying his presidency in its early days, is to abandon his plans. Yet that is what union leaders are demanding. They know they won in 1995 and might reasonably expect to win again. They are not worried if Sarkozy is fatally wounded politically since they do not like his right-wing views anyway. They also know that if they themselves lose this fight, they may sustain the sort of damage that Britain’s Mrs. Thatcher inflicted on the UK unions 30 years ago, from which they are only now showing signs of recovery. They may indeed even refuse to accept any carefully planned compromises Sarkozy has up his sleeve. France, therefore, may be set for a damaging showdown to decide if power lies in the ballot box or on the streets.
There can only be one winner.
