Migrant workers in France have responded to an insulting, tokenistic concession from their government by stepping up their campaign of strikes and occupations. Nearly 6,000 workers are now involved in a strike wave that has spread from Paris out into Oise and Orléans, demanding rights at work, regularisation papers, and a fairer system for regularising migrant workers.
The government recently released a circular offering to make minor changes to the immigration system, but the criteria for regularisation were considered to be too restrictive by the strikers, who voted to reject the deal. One union activist told Soldiarity, "Some conservative elements in the CGT [union federation] tried to present it as a great victory but were quickly silenced by outrage from other CGT activists and the sans-papiers strike delegates themselves - because they can read too!"
The strikes have been spread into other cities in France, although they are still concentrated in the greater Paris region. The tactic of occupying a temping agency and bringing isolated sans-papiers workers from other workplaces to join the strike there. This tactic enables the strikers to identify places where migrant workers work, and build up networks through which those new workplaces can be organised. As the movement shifts out to other cities in the provinces and spreads, many of the migrant workers who had come to Paris from the provinces to take part in the movement will return to their original places of work to conduct agitation there.
Workplace occupations are continuing in Paris. The French headquarters of the ISS cleaning contractor have been occupied again. In total around 1,800 workplaces have been affected by the strike, and roughly 30 workplaces are under occupation. As soon as one occupation is cleared out, the workers go to occupy another.
The strikers have begun to organise a rank-and-file network independently of the leaderships of their unions. One SUD union activist explained to Solidarity: "It's like Lenin said - one week of general strike is a better education than any congress. There are about 170 representatives of the different strike committees around France who are learning very rapidly how to lead a strike. They are representing their struggle to the media, navigating union structures, and sharing information out horizontally between workplaces rather than only communicating via official union structures. They have begun to organise their own migrant workers reps' caucus. That's not an anti-union move, it is just a logical demand of the situation on the strikers."
In addition to the reps' network that has grown up, a complicated proliferation of organisations are supporting the strike. The migrant workers' organisations have grown up on the back of traditional migrant collectives, whose initial purpose was, in the words of one activist "a sort of collective way of managing their poverty, a support structure". In addition to the migrant collectives and the trade unions, a variety of community campaign groups and NGOs are offering help to the strikers. That level of self-organisation and general social mobilisation through a number of different channels is what is giving the migrant workers the strength to continue after a month and a half of bitter strikes.
Report from the NPA website
Wednesday 25th November www.npa2009.org
After Besson and Hortefeux, it is the turn of Xavier Darcos, the good little soldier of Sarkozyism, to come and sing his part from the anti-immigration songsheet.
Xavier Darcos, the minister of labour is "threatening" all workplaces that try to hire undocumented migrant workers with administrative closure. Such a decision, if meant seriously, would paralyse a large part of the economy, through the immediate closure of hundreds of construction, cleaning and restaurant firms. Who could believe for an instant that this bosses' government would want to take measures to defend workers' rights and fight against black-market labour? Who could believe for a moment that the very same people who are organising social dumping, outsourcing, setting workers in competition with each other, unpaid overtime, in short the generalised driving-down of 'the cost of labour' would want suddenly to re-establish those social rules which they have always attacked and questioned for the purposes of protecting and increasing profits?
The declaration of the minister of labour, and the following declaration from Eric Besson, announcing a decree permitting the regularisation of over 1,000 undocumented migrant workers, are one and the same operation, perfectly consistent with the woolly debate over national identity. As whole regions are hit by the effects of the crisis, as announcements of redundancies rain down and the attack on public services encounters a growing hostility amongst the population, the rightwing is seeking recourse to the good old scapegoat of immigration.
In such a context, the migrant workers' strike is an example for all. For seven weeks, they have been fighting with courage and determination to win their rights, in spite of provocations from bosses and policemen, and a media blackout. The existence of support committees, of a united front and weekly delegates' meetings, and of strike pickets has allowed solidarity work to be effectively organised. The mobilisation did not slacken, and the number of strikers has risen to over 5,200.
Nevertheless, the government, after having conceded some advances on the conditions of regularisation of temps and security workers, has just unilaterally decided to break off negotiations and to issue a decree which only concerns around 1,000 workers. This is a real provocation, against the strikes but equally against the organisations, parties and unions which support them. It is, beyond the strikers themselves, the entire workers' movement which is targeted by these attacks.
In the face of the intransigence of the bosses and the government it is urgent to strengthen the struggle by giving it the means to spread and reinforce its links with the population. A large central initiative is being put in place today to give more visibility to the movement and to organise meetings of strikers like those which took place during the migrant workers' strikes of last year.
In short, it is time to organise the coming-together of the different fronts of the struggle for the regularisation of all migrant workers. The battles waged by RESF [a campaign group organising around migrant children in schools] for the rights of children and of families, the fights of the migrant collectives regrouped in the Ministry for Regularisation of All Migrant Workers, and those of the strikers in Ile-de-France [greater Paris region] are joining up.
The call from UCIJ to demonstrate on Sunday 29th November in Paris is a step in this direction. It will permit all those who have had enough of stop-searches, xenophobia, state racism, detention centres, and the hunt for undocumented migrants, to find themselves side-by-side with the strikers. It is time that fear switches sides!
Alain Pojolat, translated for Workers' Liberty by Edward Maltby
UCIJ"Uni(e)s contre l’immigration jetable" [united against disposable immigration] is a united collective, which regroups over 70 associations, parties and unions.