Pierre Raffarin
Posted on 06/18/2003 12:46:23 PM PDT by Stultis
Unions humiliated over pension bill as French tire of strikes
By Philip Delves Broughton, in Paris
(Filed: 18/06/2003)
France's unions are facing their greatest humiliation in more than 70 years this week as Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the prime minister, looks set to triumph in his plans to reform the creaking pension scheme.
The first of 24 clauses in M Raffarin's bill have been passed in parliament and the government hopes to move speedily in the days to come. Fresh strikes have been called for tomorrow, but M Raffarin has reached the verge of the summer holidays without conceding, while the unions are losing support and have tested public patience to the limit.
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Pierre Raffarin |
Public transport and air travel have been repeatedly interrupted and schools, postal and government offices have closed frequently.
On Sunday, 18,000 people marched in Paris to protest against the strikes, led by Sabine Herold, 21, a politics student who has become the public face of the anti-strike movement.
The march has been hailed as a turning point, a moment when resignation at the unions' behaviour finally turned into intolerance.
M Raffarin sent out 26 million letters, to every French household, yesterday explaining the need for reform.
He said the growing number of retired people and decreasing number of workers made change vital to "saving our social system".
The Socialist Party responded with three million letters of their own, arguing against the government's changes.
But even Libération, the Left-wing newspaper, acknowledged the prime minister's triumph.
In an editorial yesterday, it noted that he had survived the vital pre-holiday months of May and June without yielding.
The parliamentary Left are still trying to hold up the reforms, tabling 10,000 amendments and using every trick to prolong the debates in the Assembly.
But M Raffarin looks likely to achieve his goal of seeing the reforms passed by Bastille Day, July 14.
"For the first time since 1986, the Right has not been forced to give up a reform promised to its voters because of pressure from the street," said Libération.
But it also gave warning that the unions would return to the fight in the autumn.
M Raffarin's popularity has suffered as a result of the struggle. Since the end of last year it has dropped from 61 per cent to 45 per cent in polls published yesterday in Libération.
But he is also regarded as "courageous" by 71 per cent of people and "ambitious for France" by 63 per cent.
The government's reforms mean certain public sector workers will have to work an extra two and half years, 42 years in total, by 2020 to qualify for their full pension.
This would bring them in line with private sector employees.
Without the changes, M Raffarin says, France's pension scheme will be £35 billion in the red by then.
led by Sabine Herold, 21, a politics student who has become the public face of the anti-strike movement.
She’s cool. She should move to the US.
Liberate France!
Sabine, A newly minted Freeper is making really big news in France battling the unions and the establishment.
We should really give her our fullest support and do we have a Free Republic chapter in France? Inquiring minds want to know.
Liberate France!
Babelfish translation (choppy):
Enter in active resistance
Speech made at the time of the large gathering of Sunday June 15
My dear friends,
My name is Sabine Herold. I express myself in the name of association ' Freedom I write your name ',
How we are numerous today! More than I would not have to dare to hope it, one month ago still, when the strike was everywhere and that the media predicted without states of hearts a total blocking of the country. This time seems from now on quite completed. We put a final point at tens of years of quiet tender! This time, for the first time, we said to them NOT!
The message of our Gathering was propagated like a powder trail! Around the coffee machine, in the companies, the corridors of the administrations, under the courtyards of the schools, in front of the stall of the merchants, everywhere in France, of the million ears tightened themselves. Behind the crackling of the faxs, electronic myriades of messages, the echo of the innumerable telephone calls, the news of the change came to all.
Million French realized in less than two weeks that the things had changed, that never more we would not be these impotent hostages. We bring the proof from there to them, thanks to our mobilization here and now!
The rumour of this change even reached the media, however accustomed to retransmit only the monotonous litany of our adversaries, of those which block our freedom with impunity to work, to learn and live as good seems to us!
Yes, I say it to you, the silent majority awoke and it is not Marc Blondel or Bernard Thibault who will be able the baillonner!
You answered present at our call and I thank you! I thank you thousand times for all my heart of citoyenne! Tomorrow, I promise to you that we will be hundred times more and thousand times to defend our rights more the day after tomorrow if the circumstances require it! We are launched and nothing will stop us! I am 21 years old today and I discover a reality which did not plait me. I do not wish to bequeath to my children such a situation. And as I do not intend to give up my country, I hope well to engage until the forces of progress override conservatisms!
But we are not only joined together here to shout our anger. We are joined together to recall the values of our Republic to those which ridicule them. Freedom, Equality, Fraternity. Three words which summarize the ambition of a company or the Man takes again its free-referee against the capacity of the forts. Three supposed words to guarantee to us against the baronnies, known at the time modern under the dishonoured names of CGT, FO, SNES!
In our Declaration of the Rights, in our Constitution, it is still the Freedom, the Equality and the Fraternity which guide us. These three words speak to us about independence and insubordination to the illegitimate capacities and the privileges. They point out the power of the ' Non' to us when it is pronounced by those which are not entitled to the word.
What remains vocation of our Republic to defend its currency? Unfortunately, dear friends, the hour is with the inventory of the lost illusions.
Who can believe that France is a country of Freedom today?
Which is the freedom of that which is prevented from passing its examinations through its own professors?
Which is the freedom of that which counted on a subway, a train, a plane, paralysed periodically?
Who can believe that France is a country of Equality today?
When the State maintains for the public office and the employees of the large public companies of the indecent privileges as regards retirement pension, where is the Equality?
Who can accept without stumbling that the civils servant and comparable work less longer and cotisent less to profit from retirements higher than those of the private one?
Who can believe that France is a country of Fraternity today?
Do the CGT, FO or the SNES feel really concerned by the consequences of their acts? Do they feel worried by those which pass the vat in this moment without to have received the assistance of their professors during the revisions?
Dear friends,
I invite you from now on to enter in active resistance. Against those which are believed unpunished. To defend the principles which we cherish together. For Freedom, for Equality, for Fraternity, of which we will not have of cease to claim the complete return! We engage!
Sabine Herold
June 17, 2003
I live in New York. ;-)
Sabine, you have FReepmail!
Get em!!!!!!!!!!!
This will be occurring in the USA in about 25 years, and we will be cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Prescription Drugs because the current crop of workers will not be able to bear the weight.
We need to privatize and revolutionize the systems NOW before it is too late, or we really will have old people eating cat food later this century.
Way to go Sabine!!
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