WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL - Pension reform and the Darmanin law: the double racist penalty (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 In France, racialized people are often confined to salaried jobs that are less

well paid, more difficult, more precarious, as well as to choppy careers. The
reform project will only aggravate the already unequal relationship to retirement
for immigrant populations or people from post-colonial immigration. ---- Who says
low wages, says low contributions and therefore lower pensions. Pushing back the
legal retirement age is the assurance of lowering the latter even more. In
addition, due to the arduous nature of the jobs held, it is often difficult to
work until the age of 60 in good health. Added to the divided nature of careers,
meeting the quarters required for a complete retirement becomes a real ordeal.
All this to end up with a miserable pension and a reduced life expectancy. And if
in addition, one is an immigrant and wishes to return to his country, it is not
even possible to hope to count on the ASPA to compensate since it is conditioned
on a residence obligation of more than 6 month a year!

Massive racist discrimination (in hiring, in the workplace, etc.) indeed leads to
careers that are even more divided than those of other workers. Immigrants, like
those from immigrant backgrounds, are thus overrepresented in the statistics for
temporary work, fixed-term contracts, subsidized contracts, etc. For racialized
women, it is the double penalty since the racist division of labor combines with
the sexist one to confine them to the most precarious sectors: cleaning, home
help, caregivers, childminders. They are the convicts of feminized sectors where
precariousness, isolation and employer brutality most often reign. And that's
without counting the double working day at work and at home which makes careers
precarious...

As for the children of immigrants from colonization, in addition to the various
phenomena of social reproduction, impoverishment and precariousness that affect
the entire proletariat, they bear the brunt of the discrimination and penal
injustices that are rampant in the popular neighborhoods and socially destroy the
professional future of many. One thinks of the civic service type contracts most
often devolved to young people from working-class neighborhoods who do not allow
them to contribute to retirement. But also to uberization which pushes many
without qualifications into the status of auto-entrepreneur, especially in the
professions of delivery drivers. These "uberized" young people will thus be all
the more affected by the reform, forced to work even more hours of service in
order to be able to capitalize...

In the overseas territories, where employers' contributions are lower than in
mainland France, inequalities and mass unemployment are increased tenfold, with a
much higher cost of living and greater health problems, in particular with the
scandal chlordecone: many will never see their retreats from French
neo-colonialism. The injustice is all the greater since many metropolitan civil
servants are sinking gilded pensions there thanks to over-remuneration to offset
the cost of living, while the population is paying a high price!

Finally, we are of course thinking of undocumented workers who contribute to a
pension to which they will not be entitled... After many years without rights and
without statuses, people who are lucky enough to be regularized still find
themselves with huge holes in their careers as they never stopped working and
being overworked. In addition, the Darmanin bill on immigration plans to further
restrict the rights of undocumented people and make them more precarious. The
very restrictive criteria for residence permits for "sectors in tension" (such as
catering or construction) will not reinforce the assignment of these workers to
these environments where overexploitation is often the norm, under penalty of
losing their right to stay. The impact of these two reforms combined on the
career, the number of terms and the amount of pensions will be devastating.

Engaging in an anti-racist fight on the issue of pensions therefore requires
going beyond simple reform and recalling the inequalities that already exist in
order to denounce them. Precarious work and discrimination go together to subject
non-white populations and working-class neighborhoods to overexploitation on the
backs of employers.

Finally, the fight against discrimination and against racist discourse and
violence must also be in order! We are fighting the latter also in the social
movement and in the debate on pensions, where xenophobia, conspiracy,
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism can sometimes be expressed, especially with an
extreme right which tries to make its way to the front of the stage by promoting
its false pronatalist solutions that make women and immigrants pay the price for
employers' policies... We must also be vigilant in the face of racist police
violence during and around these mobilizations. Let's not forget the case of
Mantes-la-Jolie in 2018 during the yellow vests.

It is therefore an egalitarian, universal, socialized and denationalized right to
retirement that must be demanded!

Retirement at age 60, without annuity conditions for all, without nationality
conditions;
Taking into account the arduousness and choppy careers, essential both in
feminized sectors and in racialized sectors which often overlap.
The withdrawal of Darmanin's asylum and immigration bill;
Regularization of all undocumented migrants ("documents for all or no more papers
at all").
All on strike from March 7 and 8, but also in struggle on March 4 and 25 against
the Darmanin Law!

Libertarian Communist Union, March 4, 2023

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Reforme-des-retraites-et-loi-Darmanin-la-double-peine-raciste
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