Sarkozy's Showdown with French Unions

As more strikes loom, the French President tries to establish himself as steward of the country's long-overdue modernization

by Stefan Simons

Four million flyers have been printed, the slogans have been approved and strategists are already contemplating the march routes and rally locations. At the headquarters of the country's ruling party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), in Paris's 8th Arrondissement, plans are underway for a confrontation "with the France of the strikers."

Although the UMP leadership has not yet decided which "initiatives" their president's conservative base will be asked to support, right-wing sympathizers like the activists of Liberté chérie, a libertarian group, already announced last weekend a "major demonstration against the walkouts." The plans hark back to May 1968, when a millions-strong "silent majority" responded to student riots by converging on the Champs-Elysées to show their support for then-President Charles de Gaulle.

The situation in strike-plagued France in November 2007 is still a far cry from the existential crisis of de Gaulle's Fifth Republic. Six months after taking office, President Nicolas Sarkozy faces the first conflict over basic principles of his presidency. Since last week, railway and subway workers, employees of natural gas and electric power plants, and even fishermen and the employees of the Paris Opera have been on the picket lines to protest Sarkozy's proposed pension reforms. The strikes have led to giant, 350-kilometer (218-mile) traffic jams on highways around the cities of Marseilles, Lyon and Paris, while increasingly angry citizens have been forced to cope with overcrowded Metro trains and delays lasting hours. Like their fellow sufferers across the Rhine River in Germany, the French could soon face an escalation of the strikes.

France's striking railway workers are no longer alone. At about three dozen of the country's 85 universities, there have already been angry protests against the new higher education law, which student groups suspect is merely a well-concealed effort to privatize education. Civil servants, teachers and postal workers plan to go on strike this Tuesday to protest job cuts and demand higher wages. A few days later, tobacconists will demonstrate against the new anti-smoking law, and on Nov. 29 French judges, lawyers and court employees plan to stage strikes and rallies to protest structural reforms in the judicial system that would lead to the elimination of 200 courts.

Because the president refuses to back down from his conviction that the only recipe for success is to "launch all reform programs at the same time," he now finds himself confronted with a nationwide standstill.

'I Have Solutions for France'

Should Sarkozy back down, negotiate and make concessions? For the president and his administration, this would mean losing face, which Sarkozy refuses to do. "We are just doing our jobs," Prime Minister François Fillon insisted in a speech before the French parliament. In Washington and Berlin, Sarkozy reiterated his determination to stand his ground, telling his counterparts that his reform project was the reason he was elected in the first place. "I have solutions for France," Sarkozy said, "and I will accomplish these solutions."

But it's no coincidence that Sarkozy has chosen the confrontation over his plans to introduce early retirement options for government workers as the first political test of his presidential credibility. The reform he proposes would eliminate special job-specific privileges for about 500,000 workers known as the Régimes spéciaux. Under the existing system, locomotive drivers and workers in gas plants, for example, have the option of retiring at 50 or 55 with full pension benefits. Sarkozy wants to increase the number of years these and other workers are required to pay into the retirement system from 37.5 to 40, but the real issue is the conflict between the government and France's last remaining bastion of the left -- and the disempowerment of the labor unions.