The ticket inspectors’ strike on France’s national rail last weekend caused an anti-worker flare-up. The lackeys of the bourgeoisie cheer when there are super-profits and find it perfectly normal that shareholders should pocket dividends that go up by 20 or 30% a year but they lashed out against what they call “privileged railway workers”.
The first to complain were the right-wing senators. These “gentlemen” have just voted themselves a €700 increase of their expenses allowance, bringing them from €5,900 to €6,600 per month. This, so they say, is because inflation and the Olympic Games have driven up hotel prices. This hasn’t stopped them from maligning the inspectors who, according to them, “had no reason to complain”!
Contrary to what’s being said, the inspectors aren’t “complaining”, they’re fighting and for clear reasons: €500 a month in work bonuses, schedule adjustments for those approaching retirement and hires so that there are two inspectors aboard every high-speed train.
National rail ticket inspectors are no different from other workers: they don’t want their working conditions and wages to drop. Politicians and the media tried to set passengers against the rail workers but quite a few passengers weren’t buying it precisely because these demands resonate with the demands of the whole working class.
Prices have skyrocketed far higher than the official inflation figure of 5%. Is there a worker, employee, cashier, technician, home help who feels they are paid enough? There have been so many job losses over the years, is there anyone who has no demands about staffing levels and working conditions?
Politicians pretend to worry about workers’ holidays but, together with the big bosses, they are the first to ruin them by rolling back our rights and our buying power.
Perhaps some families have been deprived of a skiing holiday but let’s not forget that millions of others have never set foot in a skiing resort. Not because there are no trains but because, by the time we’ve paid the electricity bill and filled up with petrol, there’s no money left!
Demanding an increase of our basic salary, the salary we receive every month that guarantees us a minimum amount when we’re ill and is used to calculate our retirement pension, is a concern shared by all workers. And that increase should be directly linked to the real inflation level, the one we can all measure when we do our shopping and have to pay all our bills.
We need to fight: even if billions are dropping into the coffers of the capitalists, they’ll give nothing significant to us, the workers unless we mobilize and oblige them to do so.
This fights sometimes starts in a department or a workshop around the time of the compulsory annual salary negotiations that clearly show the bosses’ greed1. But, to make the capitalists pay, collective action and combativity must spread to all trades and sectors.
Those who defend the big bosses hate rail-worker strikes because they are a spectacular demonstration of the importance of workers in society. The ticket inspectors disrupted high speed train circulation with 70% of the personnel on strike. We can see how essential they are for society to function! It gives an idea of the strength that all groups of workers will represent when they join together to fight, including, we hope, small farmers, artisans and small shopkeepers who are all crushed by capitalism.
There will always be parasites to lecture us and explain sanctimoniously, as did the Prime Minister, that “workers have a duty to work”. Thank you Mr Attal, the working class already knows that it has no choice!
But we also know that it’s the bourgeoisie that has the right to line its pockets, the major shareholders and the big bosses like Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH, who, in 2023, received the equivalent of the gross minimum wage (€1747.20) every 15 seconds.
Long live the workers who fight to defend their living and working conditions! Whatever our branch of work, our fight is legitimate. Let’s march with our heads held high and fight to defend our interests. Let’s aim to make this a widespread fight because it’s only when workers join forces that we can really overturn the balance of power against the big bosses.
Nathalie Arthaud
1In France, salary negotiations often take place in January – though some start a little earlier.