#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #France, UCL AL #333 - 20: Social dialogue versus class struggle (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 For activists in the social movement, the social state is not an objective to be

achieved, it is even its antagonism. The much-vaunted social dialogue, even
considering that it is not just a farce intended to produce communicative
discourse, only leads to strengthening the control of the State, be it social, to
the detriment of autonomy. popular classes. ---- During the strike movement this
fall in the refineries of the multinationals Total and Esso, it was fashionable
in many mainstream media to take up the words of the government, which boasted of
" social dialogue ". Élisabeth Borne, like many of her ministers, repeated it
morning, noon and evening: "It is essential to get out of this social conflict. I
intervened personally to ensure that social dialogue took place at Total and at
Esso. In these two companies, wage negotiations have led to the signing of
agreements by unions representing the majority of employees, so it is not
acceptable for a minority to continue to block the country, it is time that labor
resume "

300 times the minimum wage for the CEO
A single figure is advanced to us to hammer home the legitimacy of the signatory
unions : " the CFDT and the CFE-CGC represent 56 % of the employees of the group
", as if this single piece of data made it possible to close the debate.
Obviously, no one then wondered about the representativeness of these unions
within the employees who were actually on strike. If we look more closely, in the
figures of its social report (available on the internet), the TotalEnergies group
declares 63,630 employees, including 27,181 affected in France. Among Total
employees, executives are over-represented, more than 44% of the workforce, while
they represent only 19% of the active population in France. For the AGSH
(Upstream, Global Services, Holding) structure alone, which employs a quarter of
the group's workforce in France, managers even represent nearly 70% of employees.
Since the least qualified jobs are most often outsourced, manual workers are
simply absent from the workforce ! Reduced to this simple sociological reality,
we understand that the employees of the refineries on strike were not, nor could
they feel, represented by these " unions ", mostly elected by executives, ready
to sign any what an agreement with their exploiter... always in the name of
social dialogue.

In liberal Newspeak, social dialogue is a synonym for diktat, but it goes better
in the media and on social networks. The notion of social dialogue is in itself a
scam in that it does not designate what it seems to imply: a discussion between
two equal parties whose interests could converge. It is even its antithesis :
rather than dialogue, it is most often an exercise in communication where the
dominant, the State or the boss, indicates to the dominated his objectives, his
roadmap and the red line that he will not cross under any circumstances. In this
sense, social dialogue is, pardon the expression, a dialogue of the deaf. This
very notion of a communion of interest between employees and employers is simply
a scam.

The recent case of the strike movement in the refineries of the TotalEnergies
group is the most perfect illustration of this. In 2021, the group made a record
profit of 14 billion euros and returned nearly 6.8 billion to its shareholders
(in addition to a share buyback of nearly 2 billion euros). That same year, the
group thanked some 4,167 of its " collaborators " including 700 in France. These
exploits have earned Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of the group, to see his salary jump
by 52% to reach 5.9 million euros annually (which represents 300 times the
minimum wage). Thus the TotalEnergies group, which continues to reap profits in
2022, preferred to lose millions of euros in a showdown with striking employees
rather than drop a few percentages of its record profits and commit to hires. An
economically irrational choice but dictated by the desire to maintain at all
costs a system based on exploitation and domination.

Social dialogue or dialogue of the deaf?
The same Élisabeth Borne, then Minister in charge of Transport, already boasted
in 2018 in a letter addressed to the unions for a meeting where they only had to
listen and acquiesce to government projects : " Social dialogue is the only
possible way in the 'interest of the public service ". What interest is she
talking about? The interests of some are not consistent with the interests of
others. The history of social struggles to win rights is a history of conflict
because it opposes two classes with antagonistic interests, the observation is
not new. It was not discussions around a table that made it possible to obtain a
compulsory weekly rest day, the eight-hour day, paid holidays, salary increases,
etc. These are conflicts, strikes, the shutdown of the economy. Each time the
employers agreed to trim a little the profits they drew from the exploitation of
the labor force of the greatest number, it was coerced and forced. And each time
he ensured that we were running to ruin. This was the case in 1840 when the first
bill limiting child labor was tabled, which according to its detractors amounted
to " sacrificing industry ".

The role of the state at such times is often seen as positive. Indeed, it is
through his intervention that limitations on the power of capitalists have been
legally enacted. The social state is then praised, including today by Macronie.
But what about the social state that virtually everyone on the left is calling
for? Is it this horizon towards which we must go or is it not rather an obstacle
to the emancipation of all? In his book The Battle of Social Security, the
economist Nicolas Da Silva deconstructs a myth firmly anchored in our
unconscious, that of the birth of Social Security, the fruit of a consensus
between Gaullists and Communists, within the National Council of Resistance. .
Nothing is less true. Its history is rooted in workers' struggles, in this way of
doing solidarity, what the author calls " la Sociale ", heiress of the 1789
Revolution and the Paris Commune. The Social, thought and built from below, is
opposed to the "social State", vertical and subject to the interests of the State
and Capital. For Nicolas Da Silva, the social State and the Social are opposed
just as representative government and democracy are opposed. To rediscover the
spirit of the Social is to rediscover the path of a truly united social
protection, self-organized and rid of the interests of the capitalists.

The Social versus the Social State
Thus the social state is not a desirable horizon but rather an impediment to the
full realization of the emancipation of the working classes. Let us refuse to
submit to it, its interests are not ours. In the same way let us refuse social
dialogue, our interests are not those of the bourgeoisie, we will only obtain
what we impose on them by force. Participating in collectively building the
general strike is today the only way to bring about the Sociale.

David (UCL Chambery)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?20-Dialogue-social-contre-lutte-des-classes
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca