For almost 50 days, workers at 7 refineries across the country have led a strike that has shaken both the oil giants TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil, as well as the Macron government. The powerful strike movement, which was beginning to spill over into other sectors, carried the potential for a major struggle to obtain a pay-rise for millions of workers from the bosses and their government.
Workers used their collective strength in response to the employers’ refusal to raise wages to confront the brutal cost of living crisis despite their monumental profits. TotalEnergies’ net profit more than doubled in one year. It rose from $2.20 billion in Q2 2021 to $5.7 billion in Q2 2022. Exxon Mobil announced its biggest quarterly profit ever. The company almost quadrupled its profit from $4.69 billion in Q2 2021 to $17.9 billion in Q2 2022!
The day after the first strike actions, TotalEnergies announced the payment of 2.6 billion euros in dividends to its shareholders. This is who they are prepared to share their profits with — spoiler alert — the workers are not the lucky ones. Yet it is they who have created the wealth through their work.
The fuel shortage that resulted from the strike was felt across the country. It had echoes throughout Europe. By mid-October, almost one in three petrol stations across the country was short of at least one product, leading to rationing in some areas.
Thieves and their accomplices tried to blame the victims
The government has spared no effort to blame the strikers, following a treacherous “logic” similar to the so-called “wage-price” spiral. Let’s be clear: it’s the hunt for profit maximisation that’s driving up inflation again, not the workers who are demanding supposedly ‘inflationary’ wage increases to pay their energy bills, rent, and put food on the table.
With their determination to relentlessly exploit staff for profit, it is the energy companies that have been responsible for the severe fuel shortages. It is the bosses who have held the entire working-class hostage. Blaming the strikers was intended to divide the working class, undermine support for the strikes, and break them.
At no time has there been a majority among the population opposed to the strikers. This shows the anger from below in society. The whole working class understands better that it shares similar interests. This has already been powerfully illustrated since the beginning of the pandemic: it is the workers who keep society going, but only a handful of capitalists benefit from it.
The beginning of widespread strikes
To the blackmail of the companies and the government’s threat to force the resumption of work by requisitioning personnel, the working class responded by intensifying the strike. In the end, TotalEnergies only succeeded in dividing the workers in mid-October by relying on elements of our social class: some union leaderships (CFDT and CFE-CGC) accepted insufficient wage proposals. They therefore decided to call off the strike.
The increase announced by the company was 7%, but this figure includes seniority bonuses and individual increases; it is actually worth just 5%. Under pressure of the strike, management tried to give a few crumbs in order to appease — successfully — the leaders of the less combative unions. By accepting this bad deal, these union leaderships have not only signed up to a de facto loss of purchasing power for their members, they have also turned their backs on a united working-class front.
On the other hand, the CGT, FO, Solidaires and FSU unions called for a continuation of the strike based on the demand for a 10% wage increase — “7% for inflation and 3% for profit sharing”. The call was then made to generalise the strike movement and thus channel the anger that exists everywhere else, but often in a dispersed way. The workers in struggle in the refineries knew that broadening the movement increased the possibility of winning, and at the same time allowed other sectors to lead a more ambitious struggle with the potential to win wage increases.
As it had already been chosen by the railway workers as a day of action, the date of 18 October was seized upon to make it “a cross-sectoral and national movement for wages and against requisitioning”. This day of strike action, and those that followed up to the beginning of November have in part lived up to their promises, but without being decisive so far in order to reach another agreement.
A “hot autumn” that was slow to show itself
The strike movement in the refineries has restored confidence in other sectors. Even in mid-September, it was impossible to imagine that a few weeks later, a generalised struggle would start; that such a dynamic type of strike movement would develop.
At the beginning of September, Macron and his government started to talk more about the use of the infamous article 49.3, which allows the executive to pass a law without a vote in Parliament, in order to impose their unpopular pension reform. A government that needs to resort to administrative measures to get its attacks through is a weak government. But this arrogant approach was also encouraged by the blatant passivity of the trade union leadership.
Two days of national strikes had been called for the end of September by the CGT and Solidaires, but although not complete failures, they were far from what would be needed to fight a battle to win. These strike days had been organised only reluctantly, in response to calls from Mélenchon and La France Insoumise (LFI) who were relaying the anger from the base and pushing for a social movement. The General-secretary of the CGT Philippe Martinez had already shown in June his lack of willingness to build a generalized movement: “Social mobilizations are the responsibility of the unions”, he had replied to the calls of Mélenchon. The latter had also tried, without success, to mobilise the trade union forces for the “March against high living costs and climate inaction” on 16 October, which was finally a great success, gathering more than 100,000 people in Paris.
The mobilisation for this march was nevertheless expected to be very difficult, given the more restricted context of struggles, but also because of the fair criticism of the disastrous management of the Quatennens affair by Mélenchon and the leadership of France Insoumise. Although it had been revealed that LFI MP Adrien Quatennes beat his wife, the LFI leadership took no measures against him. But with beginning of the generalisation of strikes, the mobilization was boosted, this date coming at the right time both to let the anger be expressed and to look at the other side finally with determination again.
The CGT leadership had no intention of moving towards a generalised strike movement. It was the growing anger of the rank and file, at the origin of the strike actions, that pushed the union leadership to go further than they had initially planned.
It is also this new, seething context that has forced Macron to postpone the launch of his pension reform until early next year. Without this powerful strike, the agreement reached — however weak — would never have seen the light of day. Like others before it, this movement confirmed that only the struggle pays, thanks to the weapon of the strike and around offensive demands.
Using the strike weapon seriously
A strike movement of this kind that is generalised and seriously organised can lead to significant pay rises for millions of people in France. Such a movement could also play a major role in organising the fight against Macron’s pension reform as well as fighting back against the economic recession that is looming in 2023. A real general strike must be on the agenda of a trade union action plan that builds offensive resistance in every workplace, and that tries to involve people in working class neighbourhoods as well as people living in rural areas, who are often forgotten when calling for this kind of struggle.
Alongside the workplaces in struggle, demonstrations by high school students are currently taking place against the proposed education reforms. Others are mobilising against the reform of unemployment insurance, which provides for an allowance to be withdrawn more easily when people resign. The trade union movement should be able to play a role in uniting the struggles that are taking place and in stimulating new ones.
Assemblies should be organised in every workplace, every neighbourhood, every high school, etc. to discuss what plan of action and what demands are needed. Democratic discussions among the rank and file are a crucial tool for building a combative movement that can withstand the fear and smear campaigns of management and government. They are also the best insurance against betrayal from the top.
An offensive program to change the system
It is important to arm the struggle with an offensive program, starting with the necessary demand for the nationalisation of the energy and financial sectors under the democratic control of workers and society. Only then can the working class, the youth and the oppressed decide democratically what is produced and how it is distributed.
Nationalisation under democratic control — as opposed to the transfer of wealth from the public to the private sector as the government has done by “nationalising” the remaining private shareholding in energy company EDF — is also a precondition to avoid capital flight, to ensure that the working class has an overview of all financial flows and that the available resources and wealth produced are invested in what is socially necessary, such as green and affordable energy.
Expropriate the energy capitalists and climate criminals
Workers in the energy and transport industries have a major role to play: not just to reduce our bills, but also to lay the foundations for a real energy transition.
Youth and the international climate movement can play an important role in the expansion and internationalisation of strike movements. The CGT itself opened the door by declaring in September: “No social justice without climate justice.” The organised labour movement must seize the ecological demands; and the youth in struggle against climate change must turn to working class struggles: this is the moment to show support for the striking workers, as “Code Red” climate activists did in Belgium in early October, blocking the infrastructure of TotalEnergies in solidarity with the striking workers in France.
The climate crisis and the cost of living and energy crisis are closely linked: we need to build a united front with workers and the trade union movement to fight against the common cause of this multiple crisis, the capitalist system.
Nationalisation of the entire energy sector under democratic control would allow the working class to use the huge profits to drive down prices, raise wages and pay for the necessary investments in green energy and a just transition from fossil fuel companies. Such a transition should include offers of reorientation for workers in the industry, coupled with a guarantee of jobs and security that their wages in the new sectors will be at least the same level.
For a democratic socialist society
Ecological planning is urgent; it must be part of a general democratic economic planning of society: directing production towards what is necessary, towards the real needs of the immense majority of the population and those of our planet.
We must discuss and move towards another type of economic system, towards a society free from exploitation and the law of profit: a democratic socialist society. This is the only one capable of ensuring that a handful of ultra-rich people do not decide everything according to their interests. It is the only one capable of ensuring the harmonious existence of human beings and their environment.
In this struggle to appropriate the means, implement such a program, and move towards societal change, it is the organised working class that can play the leading role and bring the climate movement, the women’s movement and other social movements with it in a united front. This would lay the foundations for the overthrow of the capitalist system.
