WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, CNT-AIT: Anarchosyndicalisme #180 - Unions: defending the workers or defending the system? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Despite all the gestures of the government, all the workers have understood that

Macron's plan to delay the retirement age to 64 is a shameful provocation and we
should therefore not be surprised by the formidable wave of popular protests. who
agitate the country. In all cities, demonstrations often bringing together tens
of thousands of determined participants take place in a good-natured atmosphere.
---- This movement, which impresses with its scale and energy, is a testimony to
the potential power of the working class. We can therefore only regret that the
trade union leaders who coordinate and stage these demonstrations have only one
goal: the withdrawal of the Macronian project and the return to the previous
situation. In fact, the colossal force and energy expressed by these immense
crowds therefore only tend towards a single goal, to place the negotiators of the
union leaderships in a favorable position so that they obtain a status quo and
that the age of retirement remains at age 62.

The confidence which the demonstrators thus show in their union leaders is
identical to that which voters show in politicians when they deposit a ballot in
a ballot box: in both cases, these people give themselves up bound hand and foot
to the goodwill of their leaders and hand over control of their destiny to
professional negotiators. The demonstrators should, however, remember that in
previous years, the union leaders have endorsed many setbacks and that the
situation of retirees has deteriorated sharply: the retirement age has been
raised from 60 to 62, the length of contribution, various measures leading to a
reduction in pensions, reduction in the purchasing power of retirees, etc.

Since the unions today have this extraordinary power (which the workers have
given up to them, let us remember) to decide what will be the old age of millions
of people, it is logical to ask the question of what they are and their role in
society. Generally, employee unions are considered to be the defenders of
workers' rights; as such, they ensure that the bosses respect the laws defining
the relationship between entrepreneurs and employees, to have companies in breach
punished by the courts and to change the legislation in a direction favorable to
employees by representing workers in the process. "social dialogue": state,
employers, unions; negotiation, strikes and demonstrations are their means of
action and fall within this framework clearly defined by the law, which, it
should be remembered, is promulgated by the state, which is at the service of the
propertied classes.

These objectives are exclusively at best reformist, at worst defensive, even
conservative, and the trade union confederations constitute one of the wheels of
the existing social system. Their function is to preserve and protect the
existing social order while the state manages the major sovereign functions
(army, police, etc.) and the bosses manage the production of goods. The role of
the unions is absolutely essential in the functioning of the current social
system which is fundamentally unjust, unequal and unhealthy and therefore
naturally generates disputes and revolts in the exploited classes. Maintaining
these disputes, these revolts within limits acceptable to the Power is the role
of the trade union confederations, but to achieve this, they must absolutely
preserve the confidence of the workers and this is what they are doing by
organizing an opposition "of façade", a contested spectacle.

It has not always been so. In the early days of the workers' movement, many of
the organs in charge of defending the workers were clearly revolutionary: they
considered that this system was not reformable, because they knew that what was
conquered from high struggles one day was almost immediately taken over by the
state and the propertied class. The only worthwhile objective was in their eyes
revolutionary: to abolish the exploitation of man by man and the divisions of
society into antagonistic classes, and to replace the existing economic and
social system with an egalitarian society. All the actions of the original
unions, in the years 1880-1910, therefore tended to popularize, through a slow
work of education in the working class (the defense of the immediate interests of
the workers is one of these means) the idea of revolution. social. But it is true
that at the time the unions worked on the margins of legality, there was no law
recognizing them.  Over the years, the State has understood the interest for it
to integrate the unions by giving them legal recognition, based on
representativeness. Thus, the unions abandoned their revolutionary purpose and
concentrated exclusively on defending the immediate interests of the workers,
claiming that they could achieve significant improvements in the condition of the
working class within the framework of the existing system.

History shows that this is not the case and that all social advances (most of
them obtained following popular revolts excluding unions) are constantly
challenged by the ruling class. By abandoning any revolutionary objective, the
union confederations became cogs in the system in place and they were considered
and treated accordingly. It is no secret that the majority of their financial
resources come directly from the State or from businesses, that they co-manage a
number of social organizations and institutions with the bosses, that they deal
with financial professional training, etc. Finally, the State recognizes their
merits by granting their leaders significant advantages: reserved positions for
access to certain prestigious functions, etc.

It is therefore these same trade union leaders who are organizing the opposition
to the Macron reform. As we have said previously, the trade union organizations
are caught between two seemingly contradictory injunctions: they must, in order
to deserve the confidence of the workers, respond to the aspirations of their
militant base and therefore denounce injustices, fight them; but at the same
time, they cannot go too far in their contestation, because they must show to
deserve the confidence of the State that they control the popular movement, that
they maintain it within limits and forms acceptable by the Power. However,
history shows us that a social movement, even harmless at the start, can become
uncontrollable and threaten the existing social order. The role of the trade
unions is thus as essential as it is delicate in these historic moments, because
if the social movement overflows the acceptable limits, the State will resort to
brute force to avoid a social revolution as it did to break the movement of
Yellow Vests.

This prospect still seems remote, because in view of the recent demonstrations,
we note that the vast majority of demonstrators trust the union leadership and
hope for nothing more from the current movement than the maintenance of the
current rules. But the future is never written and the situation can change
without notice.

http://cntaittoulouse.lautre.net/spip.php?article1307
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