Against the "equal opportunities" law
In his brief statement made on Friday 31st March, Jacques Chirac provided conflicting information: he was signing the law on "equal opportunities" into effect but stated that it required immediate modification. This apparent contradiction hides a manoeuvre - to divide and de-mobilize the movement against the CPE...
Statement by French organization Alternative Libertaire
- The trial period reduced to one year changes little. Instead of risking being fired after 23 months and getting re-hired 3 months later, it will now be after 11. There is still no justification for a 12-month trial period.
- We have not been informed of how exactly we will be able to avail of the "right to know the reason for the dismissal". The bosses will in no way be obliged to justify dismissing someone. It will thus be impossible to appeal to an employment tribunal and one can be fired for simply "displeasing" one's boss.
Furthermore, the struggle against the CPE is only one element of the general struggle against precarity. The CNE [Contract of New Employment] has not been questioned, and neither have any of the other forms of precarity, either in the public sector or the private. Young people may manage to save themselves from the CPE, only to run into the CNE.
Certainly, it is no use contenting ourselves with calls for a general strike of all sectors either. What we need to do is ensure that the strike can be built, without people getting demoralized if it doesn't come about quickly enough.
- Everywhere, in our cities and in our neighbourhoods and workplaces, it is essential we try to organize General Assemblies which meet as regularly as possible, joining university and high-school students with workers in order to organize actions of information and mobilization, specifying the need to work towards an open-ended General Strike that must continue until we win.
- We are already in a position to multiply common actions of struggle everywhere with the university and high-school students. Disturbances, blockades, appeals and "dead city" days, in an attempt to create the maximum impact aimed at patiently building up our strength to a level with which we can succeed.
- And apart from the organization of the struggle, the General Assemblies can also deal with an equally fundamental debate. The struggle against precarity cannot be limited to protesting against the CPE. If they coordinate, the General Assemblies can really get to grips with the question and bring forth a platform of demands against precarity, which can give substance to a real alternative, in order to break with the logic of social regression which the capitalists and the governments at their service have been imposing on us for too long.
These institutions of the republic are today shaken by a crisis of legitimacy. It is absolutely pointless participating in them if we want to change society. On the contrary, it is essential that their function be radically questioned, that we question their falsely democratic nature.
At stake is the general incrimination of capitalism, the struggle for the re-distribution of wealth and of labour. It is the taking back of control over the means of production.
It is socialism and self-management.
Translation by FdCA-International relations