Reprinted from the UK Socialist Website Left Horizons

France: refinery workers leading the way

By Gauthier Hordel

For the past three weeks, workers at France’s main refineries have set the tone. Strikes show the power of well-executed union action. Inflation has been galloping for months, at over 5.3% in October. Forecasts for 2023 are roughly similar inflation.  

Rising prices are undermining the living conditions of the population. The war in Ukraine was an opportunity for energy barons to speculate on prices, amass huge profits and fuel inflation in the process. In the first half of 2022, Total-Energies’ profits reached €10 bn. The salary of its CEO, Patrick Pouyanné, increased by 52% in 2021, from €3.9mn to €5.9mn per year. These are the reasons why workers and their unions have demanded a 10% wage increase to compensate for the decline in their standard of living. In the current economic situation, this claim is absolutely legitimate and reasonable.

Although every effort is being made to slander the strikers and set a part of the population against them, on the pretext that they would exercise a power of nuisance solely for their “personal advantage”, this movement enjoys significant broad popular support. Inflation doesn’t just affect petrochemical workers. This is a general problem that affects students, workers and pensioners alike.  

Nothing in the economy moves without the workers’ consent

From the beginning, the CGT [trade union] federation for the chemical industry (FNIC CGT) has called for the expansion of the movement to other sectors.   The impact of a strike at refineries is higher and more visible than in other sectors, but refinery workers are blazing a trail in which all employees of other sectors should follow, to broaden and strengthen the fight.

The fact that strikes cause fuel supply disruptions and destabilize the functioning of society demonstrates that without workers’ consent, nothing can work. On the other hand, if the CEO and the capitalist speculators disappeared tomorrow, we would not feel the slightest effect.

The striking workers are being ‘requisitioned’ by the government to restart fuel supplies. Sometimes the police came to pick them up directly at home.  Refusal to comply is punishable by six months in prison and a fine of €10,000. The government hopes to intimidate the strikers and dissuade them from prosecuting.  

But by doing so, the government is provoking angry reactions from some workers. The lawyers of the striking CGT union denounce the requisitions, which trample on the right to strike enshrined in the constitution. For capitalists, no democratic rights will threaten their interests.  All the institutions of the capitalist republic are there to protect capitalist interests.

The government’s main fear is the extension of the struggle. Like the management of the oil groups, it can count on allies of choice to try to isolate the CGT.  At both Esso-Exxon-Mobil and Total-Energie, management opened negotiations and concluded agreements well below the demands of the employees with the blessing of the CFDT [‘socialist’ trade union federation] and the CFE-CGC, which signed with both hands.

CGT must call for a general struggle

It is nothing more and nothing less than class collaboration. These two organizations did not call or participate in the strike. The statements of Laurent Berger, Secretary General of the CFDT, are eloquent: “When a negotiation concludes with an agreement favorable to all employees, and especially to those at the bottom of the grid, a trade unionist can be proud of his job.”

As for the CGT, its confederal leadership called for an interprofessional mobilization on October 18, joined by FO, Solidaires and FSU. It is obvious that the extension of the struggle is absolutely necessary, but it must be stressed that a simple day of mobilization will not make it possible to obtain progress for all the employees.

We need to go further. Blocking the economy by extending and renewing strikes on a massive scale would put enormous pressure on the capitalists and the government. Refiners alone cannot bear this responsibility.  They must be joined massively in the struggle.  The CGT must draw a perspective of general struggle for the indexation of wages to the rate of inflation, which would open the way to other social conquests.

The nationalization of Total-Energie as well as the entire energy sector under the democratic control of the workers would be a big step forward. It would also be the best way to plan and operate a de-carbonisation of the economy, removing this sector from the clutches of capitalist profiteers.

Admittedly, the will of the workers to fight with a system that oppresses them is not tailor-made, but to draw the perspective of a new social organization by breaking the capitalists’ stranglehold on the economy is now more indispensable than ever.

From the French Marxist newspaper and website, La Riposte. The original can be found here.