French president emerges as the victor in transit strike

When the trains stopped running, commuters were angry with the strikers, not Nicolas Sarkozy

By Tom Hundley |Tribune foreign correspondent

December 2, 2007

PARIS — When striking transit workers returned to their jobs last week, it was a significant victory for French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but not quite the "Thatcher moment" that some European commentators had been anticipating.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took on the coal miners in 1984, and by the time she was done, their union had been crushed, their jobs doomed, their pride and power shattered. She was then free to launch Britain on the path toward a free-market economy. British unions never recovered; Thatcher's Conservative Party would remain in power for the next 13 years.

During his recent campaign for president, Sarkozy promised a similarly sweeping "rupture" with the past, but what he has in mind appears to be much more limited than a Thatcherite revolution.

"Sarkozy has been preparing his ideas for some time," said Jean Chiche, an analyst at Cevipof, a Paris research institute.

"He knows that France needs more economic freedom to compete with Germany, Britain, Japan and the U.S., but he also knows he needs to maintain the French social contract," Chiche said, referring to the general sense of national entitlement to a secure job, a short workweek, a long vacation and an early retirement.

"Sarkozy is trying to steer a path between these two ideas, so you can't really compare him to Margaret Thatcher," he said.

Skilled handling of problem

The public transport strike, which was joined by teachers, magistrates, civil servants, theater workers and students, lasted for about a week and nearly paralyzed Paris. It was, in a uniquely French context, a piece of political theater necessary for both sides.

The unions needed the strike to demonstrate their ability to cause havoc, while Sarkozy needed it "as a public demonstration of his determination ... and to show the unions that public support was on his side," said Dominique Reynie, a professor at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris.

Unlike the situation in 1995, when three weeks of strikes brought the country to a standstill and forced the government into an embarrassing retreat on its half-hearted demands for reforms, Sarkozy came to power with a clear mandate for reform, and managed to maintain strong public support throughout. When the Paris trains and buses stopped running, commuters were angry with the strikers, not Sarkozy.

Even union leaders concede the president's skill in handling the strike.

"He put a stone on his tongue and didn't speak for a week. He let his labor minister do the job," said Didier Hotte, a senior official with Force Ouvriere, France's third-largest union.

"And on the public opinion side, let us say that we do not have the same friends in the media that the government has," he added.

Sarkozy also chose the right battle. The key issue was the so-called special regime pensions that allow workers in some arduous jobs to retire on a full pension at age 50 or 55. These included train drivers whose jobs are no longer quite so arduous as they were in the days of steam locomotives when the rules were first written.

Given the looming national pension crisis, the unions seemed to know that holding onto the special regimes was a lost cause. Force Ouvriere's Hotte shrugged off the setback, pointing out that the unions were able to cling to the early pensions for more than 13 years after the government first demanded their termination.

Another key difference between Thatcher and Sarkozy is that the Frenchman has been magnanimous in victory.

"He didn't break the trade unions," said Cevipof's Chiche. "He could have been much tougher with them, but he didn't want that. He knows he will need them for his reforms."

For their part, the unions have tried to minimize the defeat, insisting that they can recover some of what they lost in the strike at the bargaining table. Specifically, they expect that increased pay packages will offset reduced pension benefits.

That bargaining is now under way, and will continue until just before Christmas.

"The government has not won anything yet," said Maurad Rabhi, a member of the leadership council of the General Confederation of Labor, France's most powerful trade union. "During the strike, Sarkozy had to talk tough in order to reassure the people who voted for him; at the negotiating table he will have to compromise in order to advance."

If the negotiations do not go well, more strikes are a possibility.

Preparing for showdown

Unions represent only about 8 percent of France's workers, but they wield considerable muscle. Former President Jacques Chirac never fully recovered from the 1995 strikes at the beginning of his first term, and an attempt to reintroduce a package of much milder labor reforms two years ago was easily rejected.

But last week's strikes appear to have left the unions weakened and in some disarray. The leadership probably would preferred to have avoided the strikes, or at least to have limited them to a day or two, but they appeared to have trouble controlling hard-liners among their rank and file.

Now they are trying to regroup in time for the real showdown. That will come early next year, after municipal elections, when Sarkozy is expected to push for an end to the 35-hour workweek and to add a year or two to the number of years that all French citizens must work before collecting a pension.

"Our strategy is to hold our fire for next year," said Hotte.

thundley@tribune.com