Will Labour strike out?
Despite the first flash of winter’s fangs gripping Cantabrians, it’s good to be home. I’ve spent most of May in Europe, where in France the talk on the street is not about royal weddings or abortion referendums, but strikes.
Back home, there’s been a noticeable resurgence in industrial action in 2018, partly emboldened by the rise of a new Labour-led Government. Lyttelton Port workers led the charge in Christchurch, but across the country, train drivers, nurses, midwives, teachers and even the printers responsible for printing Labour’s 2018 Budget have all been talking or taking strike action.
After years of relatively anaemic wage growth, I certainly don’t begrudge workers rattling the cage for a top-up to their take-home pay.
In France, the mass show of union militancy is more about protecting the special privileges that have cossetted much of the public sector in a pampered parallel universe for decades. But they may have finally met their match in French President Emmanuel Macron.
As he commemorates his first anniversary in the Elysee Palace, Macron strikes me as the most impressive of the world’s new generation leaders. Unlike Canada’s disastrously ineffectual pin-up boy, Justin Trudeau, Macron is the complete leadership package.
He knows how to schmooze Donald Trump, stare down the spectre of terrorism and revitalise his country. Courage is the touchstone of political leadership and there’s some tempered metal to the Macron machine – giving rise to giddy suggestions that he fancies himself as a new Napoleon.
Ever since his election conquest, the pragmatic centrist has embarked on a sweeping reform programme, cutting income taxes by 30 per cent for working people, radically overhauling the unemployment benefit and slashing parliamentary seats by a third.
France hasn’t balanced its budget since the
1970s, leading to a public debt equivalent to nearly
100 per cent of GDP. The public sector consumes a whopping 56 per cent of GDP – the highest in the European Union.
A central plank in his election manifesto was to ‘‘unlock’’ the French economy and reshape the public sector, which employs one in five workers. And the unions are fighting back.
The spring of discontent started with Air France staging rolling strikes, despite staff being offered a 7 per cent pay rise over four years. The ailing carrier is drowning in debt, propped up by its alliance with KLM and the French Government’s ownership stake.
The French Economy Minister has just reiterated that without staff agreement to improve competitiveness, the airline ‘‘will simply disappear, because the state is not there to pay off the company’s debts’’.
The ongoing airline strikes have been causing some havoc for Kiwis flying within Europe, but it’s nothing compared to the unbridled mayhem unleashed on the railway tracks.
Major public sector reforms aim to cut 120,000 state jobs from its 5.6 million workforce, while also blitzing the entrenched jobs-for-life culture and ludicrous retirement age entitlements.
The most formidable priority is to drag SNCF, the state railway company, into the real world, triggering the biggest shake-up to France’s railways since they were nationalised in 1930s. The reform is due to help the debt-ridden operator prepare for the onset of EU-sanctioned foreign rail competition starting next year.
SNCF trains cost 30 per cent more to run than Swiss or German trains, and the rail company has amassed debts of nearly NZ$100 billion. Macron is proposing to bail out SNCF in exchange for rehashing the employment terms and axing the jobs-for-life special status. Railway staff enjoy extraordinary privileges, dating from the days when workers shovelled coal into steam engines.
At present, most railway staff can retire on a gold-plated pension at 55, while train drivers and conductors can retire at 50-52 – compared to the national retirement age of 62. They also enjoy free train travel and subsidised housing for life.
While Macron’s reforms would strip rail workers of some of their perks, the changes only affect new recruits.
But the unions have declared war, unleashing a tsunami of rolling strikes not seen since 1995, when three weeks of protests forced President Jacques Chirac into a humiliating surrender. A waiter remarked to me last week that this is Macron’s ‘‘Thatcher moment’’ as he faces off against union militancy and refuses to blink first.
Since April, chaos has consumed train travel, with two days in every five being paralysed by rolling rail strikes. On Tuesday last week, a general strike saw the likes of street sweepers, librarians and teachers join rail staff in paralysing France. After rampaging through spring, the rail strikes look set to stalk summer, too. But this time, it’s different.
Public opinion polls don’t back the unions and Macron is vowing not to join a long list of predecessors who capitulated to the revolt on the street. If you’re tripping to France, be warned.