Almost two-thirds of the nation does not trust President Emmanuel Macron to lead any sort of pension reform, so there is unity again. The reality is that Macron has a support base of just 25% which approves of whatever he does. Clearly, his remaining supporters on the pension issue are daredevils who merely want to see what the world's very first universal, one-size-fits-all pension program will actually look like.
Such a program is totally unjust because bending rail tracks in the cold, hoisting garbage cans and - I'd say - teaching 30 kids for 8 hours a day is not something which a 64-year old person can do without serious consequences for their health and future. In a West, which makes an idol of youth and dismisses the elderly, this idea - that old people deserve a future, too - is rarer than an igloo in Ecuador.
If recent history is any guide: If Macron gives just a few crumbs to a few unions they will push past the strikers and be "scabs" to the rest of the nation with zero scruples.
This strike is perhaps a final test of union power in France: Unions have become more fragmented since 1995 - and thus less powerful - and if they fail to win here the Yellow Vests will be proven right to have excluded and denounced them.
Macron: Won't rest until every Frenchman is an American in Paris
No nation has a universal pension system and the French government themselves truly don't know what they are doing. No worker knows how much their new "points" will be worth upon retirement, including Macron himself. It is clear that Macron only wants to smash the current system and replace it with something more Americanized. I write that because this has been his modus operandi ever since taking office.
Macron's policies don't need public approval because he is not trying to get re-elected - he is trying to merely win by default in 2022, when Marine Le Pen will again serve as the scare tactic. Even if he loses he is guaranteeing himself a lifetime of lucrative speech-making in Western nations by destroying the bad example which has always been the French "mixed-economy" model.
Macron is not like Hollande in that he did not backtrack - he warned France of what he was going to do. This gives him a mere fig leaf of democratic justification (in the classic Western-model style): he claims to have won a democratic mandate for his far-right economic plans, but every adult in France knows what I just wrote - his base of support in the 2017 vote was just one-quarter of voters, because everyone else voted to block the far-right (culturally, not economically) Marine Le Pen and also to sweep out the two hated mainstream parties.
In 1995, the largest French social movement since 1968, what tipped the scale was public transport workers: they bought movement to a halt for three weeks, and they are threatening to do the same this month.
What did not tip the scales in favor of worker-class justice is France's media.
France's "private" media, whose editorial lines are decided by a handful of billionaires, keeps pushing this willfully stupid point about Macron's false "mandate" which insults the intelligence of their readers and viewers. Similarly, every report about the pension reforms begins with raising the issue of the "special regimes" - which are mainly for public service manual laborers who work in conditions which no sexagenarian should endure - in an obvious ploy to create support for the far-right reform via provoking jealousy, anger and exasperation, which cannot possibly be the foundation for the proper "reform" of anything.
Not much should be expected from France's public media, either: even though their salaries are derived from taxpayer dollars only Iranian and Russian media have been covering the Yellow Vests from the street for the past five months.
Another group which also did not tip the scales is what, "Remember '68, man?!", French Boomers falsely believe will do so this time around - students.
It is only via cutting off profits to the 1% that France's leaders - in their aristocratic/bourgeois Western democracy - will ever be forced to back down. It is workers and determined adults who can and must play the deciding factor in politics. I have no idea why the youth-worshipping West thinks baby-faced students are a safer bet than tough rail workers?
Another battle which will be decided is the "blowhard" French model of influencing government - simple, often alcohol-fueled protests.
For the past decade the French have gone to a protest, taken a selfie (without smiling), gone home early and - as I've stated - lose. They are simply shocked to find, no matter how often it has occurred, that a government which keeps resorting to executive orders does not at all listen to public opinion when formulating public policy. The French love for self-expression may be self-satisfying, but it is a regular political failure.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
