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Macron’s France: Fifth Day of Anti-Reform Strikes Cripple Paris

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BREITBART LONDON

9 Dec 201952

2:54

PARIS (AP) – Paris commuters inched to work Monday through massive traffic jams as strikes against retirement plan changes halted trains and subways for a fifth straight day.

French President Emmanuel Macron girded for one of the toughest weeks of his presidency as his government prepares to present a redesign of the convoluted French pension system. He sees melding 42 different retirement plans into one as delivering a more equitable, financially sustainable system. Unions see the move as an attack on the French way of life even though Macron’s government is not expected to change the current retirement age of 62.

Citing safety risks, the SNCF national rail network warned travelers to stay home or use “alternative means of locomotion” to get around Monday instead of thronging platforms in hopes of getting the few available trains running.

As a result, the national road authority reported more than 600 kilometers (360 miles) of traffic problems at morning rush hour around the Paris region – up from 150 kilometers (90 miles) on an average day.

The road traffic was worse Monday than when the strike started last week, because many French employees managed to work from home or take a day off then. But that’s increasingly difficult as the strike wears on.

Gabriella Micuci from the Paris suburb of Le Bourget walked several kilometers (miles) in cold rain and then squeezed into a packed subway on one of the two automated Metro lines that don’t need drivers. Other commuters used shared bikes or electric scooters.

“I left home earlier than usual, I thought I was going to be able to catch an early train but not at all,” Micuci told The Associated Press. “It´s a real catastrophe, people are becoming even more violent, they are pushing you.”

Fortified by the biggest nationwide demonstrations in years when the strike launched last Thursday, unions plan new protests on Tuesday and hope to keep up the pressure on Macron’s government to back down on the retirement reform.

Only about a sixth of French trains were running Monday and international train lines also saw disruptions. Union activists also blocked bus depots around Paris, limiting bus routes.

Macron summoned Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and other top officials Sunday night to strategize for a crucial week.

The prime minister will present details of the government’s plan on Wednesday, which is expected to encourage people to work longer. Currently some French workers can retire in their 50s.

The reform is central to Macron’s vision of transforming the French economy. Government ministers insist the current system is unfair and financially unsustainable, while unions say the reform undercuts worker rights and will force people to work longer for less.

Seeking to head off public anger, Macron asked veteran politician Jean-Paul Delevoye to hold months of meetings with workers, employers and others to come up with recommendations for France’s new retirement plan. Delevoye is presenting his conclusions to unions on Monday.

Despite a booming economy, many U.S. households are still just holding on

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-recovery-that-never-happened-except.html

"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."  

Seventy percent of US Millennials say they are likely to vote socialist

The fourth annual report on “US Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism,” commissioned by the anticommunist Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and conducted by YouGov, found a sharp growth in interest in socialism among youth in the US over the past year.

The study has been conducted annually since 2016 and bases itself on interviews with over 2,000 people.

Young person in Michigan supporting Socialist Equality Party candidate Niles Niemuth in 2018

This years’ results reveal a significant radicalization taking place among youth, particularly in the Millennial Generation (those aged 23-38) and Gen Z (aged 16-22). Compared to last year’s report, favorable views of capitalism dropped 6 percentage points and 8 percentage points for Gen Z and Millennials, respectively.

Other notable findings include:

* 70 percent of Millennials say they would be “somewhat likely” or “extremely likely” to vote for a socialist candidate. The percentage of Millennials who say they would be extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate has doubled (from 10 percent in 2018 to 20 percent in 2019).

* Overall, 83 percent say they know at least a little about socialism, and 39 percent of Americans say they “know a lot”—a nearly 40 percent increase from 2018.

* Nearly half of Millennials think the government should provide a job to everyone who wants to work but cannot find it.

* Forty percent of Americans (45 percent of Gen Z and Millennials) think all higher education should be free.

* Around one in five Millennials thinks society would be better off if all private property were abolished.

* Seventy percent of Americans say the divide between the rich and the poor is a serious issue.

* Of the more than half (63 percent) of Americans who think the highest earners are “not paying their fair share,” 54 percent think increased taxes are part of the answer, and 47 percent say a complete change of the economic system is needed.

* Thirty-seven percent of Millennials think the US is one of the most unequal societies in the world.

* Over a quarter of Americans across all generations said Donald Trump is the biggest threat to world peace.

The source of this radicalization is not hard to find. The chief characteristic of life for Millennials and Gen Z has been skyrocketing social inequality. Many are forced to work two, three or even four jobs to make ends meet. One in five millennials is living below the poverty line.

The growing interest in and support for socialism coincides with a significant growth of class struggle and social protest internationally. In Lebanon, massive protests have brought an estimated one quarter of the country’s six million people onto the streets. In Chile, millions of people continue to flood the streets protesting social inequality and state violence in the largest demonstrations in the country’s history.

In the US, the strike by 32,000 Chicago teachers and support staff is in its second week, following the largest autoworker strike in 30 years by GM workers.

This eruption of the class struggle on a global scale terrifies the ruling class. They are acutely aware of social tensions and the growing interest in socialism.

The response of the Trump administration has been an open turn towards fascistic and authoritarian forms of rule. His hysterical denunciations of socialism, now a feature of nearly every rally, express the growing fear of the rich that demands for social reform will set off a mass movement for social equality.

On the other hand, the Democrats, speaking for another faction of the ruling elite, are determined to avoid anything that would mobilize popular anger against Trump. They are systematically keeping out of their impeachment inquiry any reference to Trump’s brutal crackdown on immigrants and refugees, unending war and the social catastrophe confronting workers and youth. Instead, they have focused their impeachment campaign on issues of foreign policy.

It is within this framework that the Democratic Party’s elevation of figures such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez must be understood. In order to provide a left cover for their right-wing policies, these self-proclaimed “socialists” have been brought forward to direct growing social anger back behind the Democratic Party.

In this latest campaign rally in Detroit on Sunday, Sanders once again directed his remarks against social inequality, listing many of the social ills confronting workers and youth. Most significant, however, was what was not said.

Sanders made no reference to the more than month-long strike by General Motors workers, which was just shut down by the United Auto Workers on the basis of a contract that facilitates the massive expansion of temporary workers, which has become the “new normal” for young people. Sanders also made no reference to the ongoing Chicago teachers strike.

The omissions were not accidental. The Democratic Party, through figures like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, propose a “socialism” (though they almost never use the word) that does not involve the class struggle. Ending the domination of the “billionaire class” is supposedly to be achieved without any mass social movement or any challenge to the economic domination of the capitalist class.

And it is supposedly to be done within the framework of the Democratic Party, which is no less responsible than the Republicans for the social conditions confronting workers and young people.

The critical question is to build a socialist leadership in the working class and youth, to explain what genuine socialism is and how it must be fought for. The fight for socialism means the fight to establish democratic control of the giant banks and corporations by the working class. It means an end to social inequality through a radical redistribution of wealth and the expropriation of the ill-gotten gains of the corporate and financial aristocracy. It means an end to war and abolition of the military-intelligence apparatus.

The foundation for a socialist movement is the working class, in the United States and internationally. The reorganization of economic life on a world scale, on the basis of social need, not private profit, requires the independent mobilization of the working class to take power and establish a workers’ government.