Yesterday, September 15 the streets in France came again to be the scenery of great manifestations of workers and youth against the Labor Law imposed by Hollande’s government three times by way of decree and adopted finally by the Parliament last July. The present journey of action was held in spite of the bureaucracy having sold out in June the huge fighting of the exploited against this attack from the employers.
After the school summer break, yesterday the workers and students showed that they still have energy to fight this law which deletes all the conquests of the working class in one swoop.
The strike of the workers of urban transport, trains and airports, Air France, state workers, and health care workers among others; with about 100 thousand in the streets around the country, with barricades and fierce battles against the police, the climate of the last months turned to be felt. At Belfort Alston workers (French transnational of transport and infrastructure) were mobilized against the closure of the plant which will throw 3 thousand workers to the street; in Marseille the workers of the transnational Airbus, where this year a worker committed suicide due to the terrible conditions and the threat of employers, marched alongside the combative youth.
In Paris, students organized themselves from high schools and colleges to lead the demonstration along with tens of thousands of workers. The strong police operation did not terrify youngsters who staged real pitched battles against the repressive forces. Swarms of "casseurs" (breakers) returned to targeting the symbols of this capitalist system destroying facades of banks, advertising-placards, business windows, among others. But mostly it was against police and gendarmerie that they deployed their hatred, confronting those cursed watchdogs who savagely repressed any march there was in these months and who murdered in cold blood young Adama Traoré in July.
On the street he the chant returned: "everybody hates the police!". To tear gases, sound-bombs, clubbing and rubber-bullets of the police, people responded with bottle and stone throwing and petrol bombs, all of which impacted some police agents.
Long live the combats in the streets of the exploited youth! Trial and punishment to the killers of young children of immigrants! Discharge and acquittal of all those fighters! Freedom for the political prisoners! For committees of self-defense! Dissolution of the forces of repression that are there to impose blood and fire the Al Khomri Law!
After 4 months of heroic fight of the masses, the trade union bureaucracy had demobilized and scattered the ranks of the working class. This was the action of all the bureaucracy grouped in the Inter-union, headed by Martinez of the Stalinist CGT, Force Ouvriere directed by the Lambertites and Solidaires headed by former Trotskyists of the NPA. All of them led the exploited to trust in the Parliament and then make them believe that everything possible had been done and that agreeing with the Government to negotiate by factory was the only breakthrough to the impasse. So they took the masses out of the streets and diverted them from the road to the revolutionary general strike that was necessary to defeat the law by pulling down Hollande. After that the CGT was occupied in beating the "casseurs" with its security services in a March agreed with the police; all this allowed the Government to approve the law. The Inter-union is a true unified front in the top by the bureaucrats to break down the fight and impose El Khomri Law to the bases company-by-company. That is what they had agreed with the Government in July: they would be who negotiate, from the Central Unions, the application of the new law in each factory for ensuring that the labor movement does not rebel again, so preventing all centralized action of the working class.
Therefore they led the workers to start again from zero. In May-June the workers imposed a de facto general strike, paralyzed the country and went as far as distributing electricity by cutting the power to the rich and returning it to the humble houses as did the operators of power plants. From that offensive fight, the bureaucrats and their supporters want to divide us and make us fight factory to factory.
But the masses did not surrender and therefore all the unions were forced to call the action day of yesterday. The masses refuse to backstep from the conquest meant by the fights of May-June when they were imposing a unified fight from their base organizations. Therefore these action days occur despite and against the bureaucracy that wants to submit the fight to negotiations by factory. And the exploited once again took back the day of action in their hands on the offensive. Against what "anti-capitalists" of the NPA said in July to support the bureaucracy and deceive the masses (that "there were not enough forces" for defeat it law and open the road of the French May), yesterday the masses demonstrated that there are more than enough conditions: two months after the first fights workers continue showing huge predisposition to fight! Actually the fake “anticapitalists” acted so that the masses do not exceed the bureaucracy and extend and centralize their self-organization.
The bureaucrats of CGT and FO already admitted publicly that they will not return to call for a day of national action so to avoid the "uncontrolled actions" and that "the unions will continue to fight" by others means... Martinez of the CGT announced that "he wants to locate the battlefield inside the companies to reject the application of the more critical measures of the Labor Law." Mailly of Force Ouvriere says that he is going to "attack the text (of the law, NdT) in the legal field". The bureaucracy wants to impose its policy of "fighting" factory to factory and resorting to justice. That’s the same justice which commands the repression to the marches, condemns students for protesting and workers for fighting for keeping their jobs; the same that ordered evictions of the refugees’ settlements. That justice is part of the institutions that already gave their dictum, which is none other than the ok for the applying of the anti-worker law by every means. We cannot allow the Union bureaucracy to go on selling out our fight! They do not represent the millions that came to the struggle in these months! Factory to factory or before the justice of the employers 90% of the working class, that are not unionized are left out: contracted and precarious workers, the unemployed, the immigrants that are the heart of the French working class, also the retirees and the students that were the vanguard of the fight against Al Khomri Law. They want to impose us the worst conditions...!
That's why we need to put up and strengthen the organizations of self-determination of the exploited: the factory committees, strike pickets and action committees for coordinating, extending and centralizing the struggle to defeat the trade union bureaucracy and return to the road to the revolutionary general strike. After yesterday’s actions inter-branch assemblies of fighting workers and students were performed. We must go further along this path! We must take the fight in our hands! It is necessary to return to unite the workers’ ranks and defeat the Union bureaucracy to wage a decisive battle!
It is necessary to put in place a coordinator board of all committees and other organizations of the fighting masses to impose the Union bureaucrats a national strike Committee that dispute them the leadership! We must prepare the revolutionary general strike that becomes at the order of the day with each thrust of the masses!
For that: open the way to the assemblies of base and direct democracy! Let's ignore the law and prevent it to be applied!
Open the way to the youth! Open the way to the committees of action! For committees of employed, unemployed, precarious workers, students, immigrants and refugees to unify combat! The same class, the same fight!
To defeat El Khomri Law Hollande must be thrown down with a revolutionary general strike!
Let’s make the French May come again!
Correspondent
