In Paris, a Protest Movement Awakens

Violence has erupted in cities across France as tens of thousands of people took to the streets in the latest protests against labour reforms seen as threatening workers’ rights.

Several people were injured when police and protesters clashed in Paris, western Rennes and Nantes, as demonstrations took place to keep up pressure against the reforms, which will make it easier for struggling companies to fire workers.

There were recently protests in some 200 cities over the changes to the rules governing layoffs and France’s 35-hour working week.

‘We’re starting the second month (of protests),’ Jean-Claude Mailly of the Force Ouvriere trade union said in Paris. ‘We’re not afraid of losing steam.’

“This is not a protest. People here are creating something different, insisting on “real democracy”, mutual care and a newfound sense of togetherness.”

Last week, police in Rennes used tear gas and stun grenades in clashes with protesters. Three members of the security forces needed emergency care and there were unconfirmed reports of another 19 people injured.

In nearby Nantes, hundreds of youths put up barricades and threw stones, bottles and eggs at security forces who responded with stun guns and tear gas.

Paris police also used tear gas against several dozen masked protesters throwing bottles and firecrackers, which wounded one officer.

“To celebrate and imagine together.”
“To look at each other and smile.”
“No parties, no barriers, no labels.”
“Take squares and rediscover hope.”

The labour reforms, which have already been diluted once in a bid to placate critics, are considered unlikely to achieve their stated goal of reining in unemployment, which stands at 25 per cent among young people.

Socialist President Francois Hollande’s government is desperate to push through the reforms, billed as a last-gasp attempt to boost the flailing economy before next year’s presidential election.

Youths have been at the forefront of the protest movement, and student union leader William Martinet said the proposed legislation was a form of ‘social hazing’.

Many young people, including graduates, find themselves working on short-term contracts for several years after their studies, or doing internships while hoping to secure a job.

Anger over the reforms has spawned a protest movement dubbed ‘Up All Night’ that is taking over French city squares, with young people gathering until dawn demanding social change.

How it started

In Paris, hundreds of people have been gathering every night since March 31 at the vast Place de la Republique.

It all began on that night, after upward of 390,000 students and labor union members marched in several cities to protest a plan by President François Hollande’s government to change protective labor laws to make it easier and less costly for employers to lay off workers. The idea, the government argues, is to open up jobs for younger people and reduce a seemingly intractable unemployment rate of 10 percent (nearly 26 percent among the young). Mr. Hollande has said he will not seek re-election if he cannot deliver on that promise.

But the attempt to weaken worker protections — whatever its intended benefits — is, in the eyes of many on the French left, a betrayal by a Socialist government they did not elect to enact business-friendly policies long advocated by the right. This move has crystallized more general frustration with the Hollande government. On March 30, Mr. Hollande was forced to abandon a constitutional amendment that would have allowed citizens found guilty of terrorism charges to be stripped of their citizenship, a proposal that provoked mutiny in the ranks of the Socialist party. On Monday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced measures aimed at mollifying the students, including a government subsidy for graduates seeking work. Student leaders vowed to continue their protests.

After the March 31 demonstration in Paris, a handful of protesters decided not to go home and headed for the Place de la République, where they spent the night. Every night since then, between several hundred and several thousand people have gathered there to call for nothing less than the invention of an entirely new political and economic order.

We are more than 100,000 people on this page. We are in 150 cities, #partoutdebout, in France and dozens of cities around the world. We are also #banlieuesdebout, #artistesdebout and many other things! We are 100,000 and soon we will be millions — in the process of creating a new force that will displace the old world.

The labour reforms are a unifying theme of the gatherings, but the Up All Night movement is broader, embracing a range of anti-establishment grievances.

They say they are drawing inspiration from the Spanish protesters known as the Indignados, who gave rise to the far-left Podemos party.

A protester last week described the new movement as a ‘convergence of struggles’ and was a sign of ‘the end of a system’.

Echoing her remarks was a banner reading ‘Game over, the people are waking up’.

The labour bill has passed the committee stage after a few more tweaks such as a clarification over when an employer can declare economic duress to justify layoffs.

The legislation is to go to the floor of parliament on May 3, and unions have called for a strike on April 28 – the third in the wave of protest actions.

While some unions have shown willingness to negotiate the reforms, others are calling for the bill to be withdrawn.

Philippe Martinez, of the CGT union, called for the government to ‘go back to square one for a real labour code that will protect workers’.

Also, Yanis Varoufakis, the former Minister of Finance of Greece, appeared during the protests to send his message “Don’t let this energy go to waste. Don’t let this energy promote careers. Make a difference together throughout Europe”.

The future

With presidential elections just a year away, Nuit Debout is not good news for Mr. Hollande’s embattled Socialist party. His approval rating, which rose after each of last year’s terrorist attacks, fell last month to just 17 percent. On April 6, Mr. Hollande’s outspoken minister of finance, Emmanuel Macron, announced that he, too, was launching an alternative political movement, called En Marche! (Let’s get moving!), that he says will be “neither on the right nor on the left.”

It is too early to tell whether the Nuit Debout movement, which rejects any formal structure, will evolve into a viable left-wing political party along the lines of Spain’s Podemos or Greece’s Syriza parties. On Monday morning, all temporary structures were cleared from the Place de la République, but the protesters were allowed to continue gathering at night, provided they stayed peaceful and vacated the public space in the morning.

It is clear that the Movements of the Squares — or Real Democracy Movements — that began in late 2010 are in no way ending: they are moving, popping up again and again around the globe as they change form, as they will continue to do. Movements are not linear; they move, have ebbs and flows. The movement in Paris may continue to spread and grow until there is enough popular power to govern from below. Or it may dissipate from the squares, relocating into other spheres of life — perhaps to come back again even larger and more grounded in different neighborhoods, workplaces and schools. Or some combination of both of these. Or not. The future is yet to be determined.

Sources: nytimes.com, dailymail.co.uk and real.gr