lion people took to the streets - 250,000 in Paris, 200,000 in Marseilles, 100,000 in Toulouse, and tens of thousands in dozens of other places.
They were striking and demonstrating against the right-wing Raffarin government's plan for pension reform - known as the Fillon Plan. Teachers were a major component of the demonstrations. They are involved in a snowballing strike that started in some areas at the end of March and has now taken on national proportions.
The teachers' strike was provoked by two government measures. First, a decentralisation project to transfer more than 100,000 non-teaching personnel from the national education system to local and regional authorities.
This would be the first step towards dismantling the national education system with its ethos of equal education for all. It would prepare the way for the introduction of private capital. who could afford to pay into them and a miserly pension for the rest.
Opposition to the Fillon Plan has been building up for some time. The first series of demonstrations was on February 1, a Saturday, and brought 500,000 people into the streets. A second day of strikes and demonstrations on April 3 was even bigger. May 13 was the third instalment.
For a few days after May 13, it was not clear if this was going to be a big bang with no follow-up other than a mass demonstration planned for Sunday 25 May, three days
ECOLE , DANGED trust on the time since 1995. Theoretically it can do what it likes.
In practice it has to take into account the real relationship of forces in society. Chirac owed his landslide presidential victory to the first-round elimination of Socialist Party candidate Lionel Jospin and a mass reflex of voting not positively for Chirac but against Le Pen.
The right won a parliamentary majority on Chirac's coat tails over a dazed Socialist Party and its Communist and Green coalition partners. Initially the government Plan. ment does not withdraw the Fillon Plan. Rai and Paris public transport workers' unions have already called a strike from that date The May 25 demonstration looks set to be massive and there is talk of a new day of action on May 27.
The government is caught between the rock of the MEDEF and the hard place of popular rejection of its policies. Polls show that 58 per cent of the population reject the Fillon Plan. 64 percent supported the May 13 strike, a higher figure than in 1995
Asked who they trust on the question of pensions, 49 per cent replied the unions, 43 per cent the government and 18 per cent the MEDEF. 72 per cent of public sector workers and 46 per cent in the private sector declare themselves ready to take part in strikes and demonstrations.
In the absence of any serious concessions from the government, and pushed forward by their members, most of the unions are calling for withdrawal of the Fillon Plan Following its recent congress the Socialist Party has come out of convalescence and taken the same position. As Libération put it, for the moment it's a case of 'a conflict without an emergency exit.
Raffarin may offer to modify or postpone the education reform to save the Fillon Plan. At one point that might have defused the teachers' movement. But it may be too late now. And concessions on that front might serve as an encouragement to the move ment to force the government to back down on pensions.
Whatever happens, the outcome of the present confrontation will determine the relationship of class forces and the politica
climate in France for some time. It is begin ning to look as if it won't be to the advantage of the government and the employers.
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20 soclalist resistance June 2003 International resistance