Public Support for Strike Stuns French Leaders

Guy Eiferman’s day began long before the cold dawn, at home in the Paris suburbs. Setting out for the office in his car, he passed the station where a commuter train usually zips him to work in less than half an hour.

But the station was locked, as it has been for almost two weeks, shut down with nearly every other train in the country by public workers trying to protect such perks as a guaranteed job and retirement at age 50.

After enduring three hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic, Eiferman arrived at work in Paris, tired and frustrated. But, like so many in France, he sympathized with the strikers making his life miserable.

“It’s a genuine paradox,” said Eiferman, who works for a large pharmaceutical company. “When I see a guy on strike to protect these perks, I can’t say they are legitimate demands. But then I see my own situation. We don’t like to admit it, but everyone who works in France has perks.”

And, the 36-year-old father of three added, “I worry that one day I’ll want to protect my own garden.”

The strike by transport workers and other public employees has paralyzed France since Nov. 24, battering the world’s fourth-largest economy, shutting everything from the Paris subway to high-speed, intercity rail lines and creating truly horrendous daily traffic jams.

But what has really shocked President Jacques Chirac and his prime minister, Alain Juppe, is broad sympathy among ordinary French citizens for the strike--illustrated by the hundreds of thousands who joined more huge protest marches across the nation Tuesday--and the level of antipathy for the president they elected just six months ago.

Instead of becoming angry at the strikers, most French are angry at the government. Very angry. Candidate Chirac promised them more jobs and higher salaries. President Chirac is demanding major sacrifices in the sacrosanct state welfare system to reduce its soaring deficit, and he has flatly refused to back down.

“People aren’t opposed to reform, but they feel deceived by Chirac,” said Pascal Perrineau, head of the Paris-based Center for the Study of French Political Life. “They feel they’ve been ‘rolled in flour’ [set up] by a man who promised them one thing and now is doing another.”

The battle line has been drawn over Juppe’s broad austerity plan, which includes the largest overhaul of the social security system’s health and welfare provisions in three decades, higher taxes, and privatization and restructuring of public companies that are likely to include job cuts.

Withdraw the plan, the strikers are demanding. Nothing short of that will satisfy them.

No way, responds Juppe, who vows to resign before scrapping the reform package.

“We can’t wait any longer,” the prime minister said Tuesday, raising his voice to a shout in parliament, which later handily defeated a motion of no-confidence in the government. “It’s necessary to do this now, and together. France has a rendezvous with history.”

Later, Juppe made a direct appeal in a nationally televised address, acknowledging hard times for the strikers and those affected by the strike but arguing that “nobody is offering any other plan. What are we going to do? Stay in the status quo that we all know is wrong?”

Juppe contends that the reforms are necessary to cut the $65-billion public debt, $12 billion of which is ascribed to the social security system and much of the remainder to state-run companies such as the SNCF, which runs the vast rail network.

Halving that deficit by 1997 will enable France to qualify for inclusion in the single European currency, which the government considers essential to the country’s economic future. But that is a tough sell, partly because the French only narrowly approved monetary union and also because the average French worker cares little about the country’s role in a unified Europe.

Recent opinion polls show the French about evenly divided over the strike, the most severe here in a decade. But the real issue has become trust, and the sharp drop in approval ratings for Chirac and Juppe indicates that many have lost faith in their government.

“This hostility is more directed at the government than at reform,” Perrineau said. “The French know that reform is justified. We all realize we can’t go on with this deficit. But it’s being done in an authoritarian style that makes the French feel it’s a fait accompli .”

In fact, change by confrontation is built into the French system. The party of Chirac and Juppe controls 80% of parliament, so the only avenue open to opponents is to create social chaos with strikes and street protests.

“France only changes through crisis,” Perrineau said. “We don’t have the habit of changing in a consensual way. And this crisis underlines how much the politicians are cut off from the population. They think they know everything and that the people just have to change.”

From the beginning of the crisis, Chirac and Juppe figured they could survive the strike. Fewer than 10% of the country’s workers are unionized, and more than 12% of the work force is unemployed. The government assumed people would soon get fed up with the disruptions caused by workers addicted to what the government regards as overly generous benefits.

But the strike appears to have galvanized the French, tapping into widespread fears that the government, rather than searching for ways to cut its own spending, is out to take money from everyone who enjoys the wide array of state benefits, from monthly allowances for families with children to free doctor visits.

The government’s reforms have won praise among economists concerned about France’s long involvement, at levels unprecedented in Europe, in the public sector. But the concept of short-term sacrifice for long-term gain carries little weight on the streets.

While Guy Eiferman prepared to battle traffic for his journey home Tuesday, another young suburbanite, Jean-Michel Renard, a father of two who works in a government-owned aeronautical parts factory, was on the Paris streets, marching in the chill and snow flurries to protest what he sees as government arrogance and broken promises.

On strike for more than a week, Renard, 37, admitted that he cannot afford to stay out much longer. “Maybe 15 days, three weeks,” he said. He and his wife, who works as a secretary, need both their salaries to make their home mortgage payment, not to mention to purchase Christmas gifts for their two sons, ages 7 and 1 1/2.

But he can’t afford to lose this battle either. Like Eiferman and other French parents, Renard receives a family allowance--monthly government subsidies for each child in a family. Those allowances, which amount to about $800 in Renard’s case, have been tax-free and an important part of his family budget, but the government now wants to tax them.

“This isn’t money for me but for my children,” Renard said. “It’s part of the basis of our society. We had a system that took care of everyone. This will create a system that only helps the rich. This is not about a budget deficit. In some cases, this could mean life or death for the population.”

Renard’s fear, he said, “is that if we give in now, we will appear weak, and it will allow this government to run over us. We’re the only country in the world that guillotined our kings. And I hope this government remembers that.”

A unifying theme of the protests, which have been staged in hundreds of French cities from Marseilles to Paris, has been the arrogance of France’s leaders, who promised to dedicate themselves to creating jobs and then decided six months later that reducing the deficit was more important.

The strike was begun by two unions representing transport workers, who are protesting government plans to restructure the rail company, SNCF, as well as increase the amount of time all public employees must pay into the social security system from 37 1/2 years to 40 years. A similar change in the system was passed several years ago for private-sector workers.

The SNCF is considered, by unions and economists, a test of the government’s reforms. It receives $10 billion a year in government subsidies and still loses money. About half the SNCF’s rail lines are unprofitable, and its employees receive a number of benefits, including the opportunity for full retirement at age 50.

In recent days, the strike has grown to include some workers in the state electrical company and postal service as well as some teachers, doctors and nurses. In addition, university students have joined the protests to demand more funds for overcrowded, understaffed schools.

While most of the nation’s 5 million civil servants have remained on the job, and appeals to private-sector employees to join the strike have been unsuccessful, many are grateful to the strikers for taking a stand against the government.

Even French commuters, turning to bikes and roller skates to get to work, have displayed a stoicism that has surprised the government.