Not Just Another French Strike: Unions Demonstrate the Irresolvable Cracks of The French Fifth Republic
Protest against the pensions reform, Paris, March 28th, 2023. Photo by Jules.
In January, French President Emmanuel Macron's government announced its plan “to save the French public pensions system,” in which current workers finance the pensions of retirees. The government claimed that, with the French population aging, they have no choice but to push back the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 and extend the minimum number of working years needed to obtain full retirement pensions from 43 to 44 years. On March 16, 2023, at four o’clock, French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne dealt the final blow: Macron's government was using Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass its pensions reform by executive order without being voted on by Parliament.
Only a few hours later, thousands of people were protesting in front of the National Assembly in support of their representatives who had been silenced by the use of an executive order. The French people did not want this reform—according to polls, three-fourths of employable people in France oppose an increase in the retirement age. More emphatically, six out of seven French people “support” or “feel sympathetic towards” the mobilization against the reform. These numbers have remained stable since the first demonstrations in January, with weekly strikes and protests gaining outstanding numbers and consistently supportive public opinion. If Assembly Members cannot speak for the people, then the people will continue speaking for themselves.
In a game of constitutional tests, the executive order triggered its parliamentary counterpart—once the government uses Article 49.3, the parliament can issue a vote of no confidence in response. If adopted by a majority of Assembly Members, the president must choose to either change his government or dissolve the National Assembly. Subsequently, two votes of no confidence were raised. Yet on Monday, March 20, the opposition fell nine votes short of adopting the motion, though any other outcome would have been a statistical miracle. Indeed, out of the 115 votes of no confidence issued throughout the history of the Fifth Republic, only one has passed. Votes of no confidence seem to serve one purpose under French constitutionalism: maintaining the illusion that the French still live under somewhat of a parliamentary regime.
On the following Thursday, unions called for continued mobilization despite this institutional failure. According to the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union, 3.5 million people showed up—according to the government, 1.1 million. The protesters’ claims have now expanded. They will not accept this pensions reform, which, like many of Macron's previous reforms, disproportionately affects the working class, people of immigrant descent, and women—the latter of whom will have to work longer because of the way the pensions system accounts for maternity leaves. Additionally, the unions argue that the government stomped over parliamentary debate and disregarded public opinion entirely—government is meant to be for the people, not against them.
Three Years After the Yellow Vests Movement: The Return of the Unions
Only three years after the COVID-19 pandemic hastened the end of the Yellow Vests movement, France is burning again, and the police are lashing out at protestors. The UN's rebuke of the French police's actions during the Yellow Vests movement seems to have faded into the past. The Yellow Vests movement fascinated scholars for its atypically horizontal and spontaneous nature. It emerged from Facebook into the streets of small rural towns before taking over the Champs-Elysees; throughout its existence, it refused to nominate leaders or ascribe to political parties. It refused any institutionalization and formal organization. It simply was.
On the other hand, unions have structured and guided the mobilizations against the pensions reform, coordinating strike dates and protests. Even the more conservative labor union, the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), has been strongly opposed to the reform, alongside more radical unions such as the CGT. But the protests rallied people from organizations other than the “big five” French labor unions: students’ and high schoolers’ unions were at the forefront of the movement, and feminist collectives denounced the disparate effect of the reform on women.
Mathilde Gravet is one of the Secretary Generals of Alternative Etudiante Rémoise (AER), the leftist student union in the city of Reims. In an exclusive interview with the Columbia Political Review, she highlighted the importance of unions working together: “The traditional labor unions needed us to join them because there were so many students; we were a numerical force. And we needed them because of their strong union culture and means.”
Just like the Yellow Vests movement, these pensions reform protests have also found a way to unite people with different backgrounds. Both mobilizations have much in common: a strong presence outside of Paris, the crystallization of an anti-elite sentiment directed at Macron and his policies, a popular push without any claimed political affiliation, and the demonstration of the falsehood of the statement that French people are disinterested in politics. These mobilizations have shown that citizens are conscious of politics’ effects on their lives, are opinionated, and are vocal about said opinions. Democracy is not threatened because people do not care—the recent mobilizations prove as much. If anything, it is threatened because our institutions fail to provide satisfactory means of representation for concerned citizens to take part in them. This surge of unionization suggests a new institutional route for democratic mobilization.
The Return of Unions: Lessons For The Future of French Politics
In seeing the similarities between both popular political mobilizations and the overlap in participants’ demographics, one could be tempted to read the French pensions reform mobilizations as merely a reiteration of the unfinished Yellow Vest movement. During our interview, Gravet spoke about the participation of the local Yellow Vests in the interunion, a coalition of various unions working in concert, and the help they have provided the AER with, notably when dealing with self-proclaimed fascist groups intervening in protests. What does this structuration of the movement through unions signify, if anything? How will it affect the outcome of this insurgence, and what does it tell us about the future of French politics?
Firstly, the impact of organization on how long-lasting and efficient the protests are cannot be underestimated. Gravet states, “The desire to do something, the momentum, is already there … we’re here to channel it into participation.” And it works: Gravet told me the AER prides itself on having mobilized hundreds of college students in the usually quiet and conservative streets of Reims. Unions allow for sustained and smart mobilization: three months after the government announced the pensions reform—although one needs to account for the recent upsurge in interest because of the failure of the no confidence vote—3.5 million protestors were in the street. At their peak, the Yellow Vests amounted to 300,000 people, decreasing to fewer than 100,000 in a month and later hovering around tens of thousands of participants. Although their movement was impressively sustained throughout time, with people gathering from November 2018 to the beginning of the pandemic, structuration of a protest movement through unions should allow for maintaining high numbers of participation over time. Contrary to the Yellow Vests movements, unions have long-standing institutional knowledge on how to navigate the political arena—for instance, the CGT was founded in 1895. They have experience and history in galvanizing people and requiring them to show up. They have a human capital reserve that they can activate when needed, and they are constantly looking to expand that base. They have the material means, the proof-tested strategies, and the concrete experience necessary to sustain a strong movement over time.
But this momentum in French politics is also an occasion for unions to gain strength for the future, beyond the pensions reform protests. For three months now, labor and youth unions have been at the forefront of all conversations, their spokespeople invited on all panels of discussion, and their guidance retransmitted on every news channel. This increased media presence, coupled with the public opinion's strong support of the protests, could increase unionization rates in the coming months. At the micro level, this shows in unions’ active efforts to engage with and recruit protestors. Gravet explained that during protests, leaders of the AER will scout the crowd, discuss with the college students there, take their contact information, and add them to their discussion channels. Some of the new card-carrying members will grow to become active strategic forces within the union; others will serve to grow the numbers and thus the organization's legitimacy. Both will be needed in the future to support both lines of AER’s actions: helping students facing legal, financial, and other issues, as well as voicing their opinions about upcoming reform—which will soon be needed, with Macron recently announcing the creation of a new online platform for graduate degree applications.
“At one point, you just have to organize,” concluded Gravet at the end of our interview. Unions’ organizing power provides hope for these demonstrations to continue and for increased popular power at the local and national levels in the future. As protestors’ claims increasingly shift towards a critique of Macron’s mode of government, structuration of popular demands through unions creates a challenge—perhaps even an alternative—to current top-down modes of government. Protestors are no longer protesting an unpopular reform, they are protesting against the very system that allowed it to be adopted. The ability of the government to use Article 49.3 of the Constitution to pass a reform that a large majority of French people do not want, and the subsequent inevitable failure of the alleged parliamentary check to this executive tool, highlight the ultra-presidentialism of the French Fifth Republic. Banners read “Exit Macron” and “Hey Manu, come down!” (Eh Manu, tu descends) as a critique of Macron’s neoliberal reforms which keep favoring the rich and also his individualistic and authoritarian “Jupitarian” mode of government. The truth is, this top-down executive decision-making form of government is made for the institutions of the Fifth Republic—or rather, the institutions are made to facilitate such modes of Napoleonian leadership, reminiscent of their creator, Charles de Gaulle. Macron was re-elected with a thin support base, with many electors voting against the extreme right rather than for him, and abstention numbers were alarmingly high. And yet, the institutions of the Fifth Republic still allow him to govern by executive order.
Confronted with the weakness of Parliament and its votes, the people are left with one channel of contestation: in the street with unions. The bottom-up vision of politics they are pushing demonstrates that other ways of conceiving politics are possible: more horizontal, more concerned with the concrete issues faced by the people, more socially just and aware of inequalities, and more representative. The AER’s work perfectly illustrates these intrinsically democratic features of unions: Gravet told me how they rotate people in leadership positions on a regular basis to allow for greater horizontality, they aim at defending students facing legal hardships on a case-by-case basis, they build their agenda off of member-students’ concerns, and they are students representing other students. Unions live by the rules they seek to implement: perhaps the alternative they present during the protests against the pensions reform is one of what a truly representative system could look like after the Fifth Republic.
Louise Desmarchelier (GS’24) is a French-American student who is part of the Sciences Po - Columbia Dual BA. Her main interests are gender equality, education policy, and questions of democratic representativity.
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