“What did the unions lack to obtain the withdrawal of the pension reform? »

2023-05-01 07:00:21

PWhy didn’t the unions win their case during the pension reform? Is it a failure? Self-censorship, which prevails in many sectors today, seems to prohibit such a question. Especially since the executive won a Pyrrhic victory since, to impose its project, it had to resort to the whole arsenal of so-called rationalized parliamentarism offered by the Constitution. But what failed the unions to obtain the withdrawal of the reform?

The strategy of the street, appeared as obvious, deserves to be questioned. Hasn’t this led to the belief that resorting to strikes for reasons that are no doubt more cultural than economic has now become almost impossible? However, it is indeed on the strike that the movements of the past have taken support while the strategy of the street has already been held in check against the previous pension reform, under Sarkozy, in 2010, against the El Khomri law in 2016 , against the Macron ordinances in 2017, against retirement on points in 2019-2020.

The strategy of the street, in spite of numerous processions, its recurrence, its peaceful character, did not produce the expected effects. Did she have the defects of her qualities? In fact, the “yellow vests”, although less numerous, but more unexpected, more innovative in their forms of protest, more visible, more regular and determined, have obtained results. If they had not promised to bring France to a standstill – and were therefore not obliged to keep such a commitment –, they had nonetheless become obsessed with power.

The largely absent private

The context can also explain the failure. The unions mainly mobilized their usual audiences: civil servants, employees of joint ventures, retirees, etc. The private sector remained largely absent, even if opinion polls showed the unpopularity of the reform. In other words, by fatalism, indifference, understanding or even consent to the reform, by voluntary or unwilling distancing from collective action, whole sections of the workforce, assets and society have remained spectators of the movement.

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The success or failure of a social movement also owes a great deal to the attitude of the adversary, here the government. On the strength of past lessons, he has armed himself with patience. He watched the protesters pass like a marching monomial. He allowed the excesses of the police, expecting that maintaining order contrary to that practiced in contemporary democracies would excite the demonstrators and discredit the movement. Above all, he proved to be intractable, certain of the merits of his project, unlike the more or less disunited Juppé (1995) or Villepin (2006) governments, which had ended up giving in to the streets.

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