Francia: governo e sindacati preparano un forte taglio alle pensioni
● La riforma delle pensioni in Francia è un massiccio trasferimento di fondi dai pensionati salariati alle casse statali, ed in ultima istanza ai grandi gruppi;
● scopo di questa ultima tranche della riforma: portare entro il 2012 da 40 a 41 anni i contributi minimi per la pensione.
– In Francia ci sono circa 13,5 mn. di pensionati, pari al 20% della popolazione;
– ogni anno aumentano di 500mila, con previsioni di +700mila con il pensionamento della generazione del baby boom.
o 2006, spesa pensionistica circa €235 MD, di cui oltre €230 MD dai contributi di lavoratori e datori di lavoro, e €4,2 MD pagati dallo Stato.
o Il Consiglio di orientamento per le pensioni (COR) prevedeva a novembre 2007 che la quota di PIL per le pensioni sarebbe stata mantenuta costante al 13%, nonostante importanti aumenti del numero dei pensionati. Questo porterebbe a deficit nel finanziamento delle pensioni di €15,1 MD nel 2015, di €47,1 MD nel 2030 e di €68,8MD nel 2050.
● Da qui la necessità sostenuta dal governo di aumentare gli anni contributivi.
● I soldi per le pensioni ci sono: a fronte della spesa statale per le pensioni di €4,2 MD, Sarkozy nel 2007 ha elargito una riduzione fiscale del 10% ai redditi più elevati, costo €15 MD/anno.
● Il previsto deficit per le pensioni di €69 MD nei prossimi 40 anni è inferiore al profitto 2007 delle 40 maggiori imprese dell’indice CAC, pari a €100MD.
● Il risultato finale delle varie riforme pensionistiche in Francia porterà (OCDE) le pensioni dal 64,7% a 51,2% del salario finale.
o La prima riforma in questo senso è stata quella del 1993 del primo ministro Edouard Balladur (il privato da 37,5 a 40 anni di contributi)
o la seconda nel 2003 (Raffarin): i lavoratori del PI da 37,5 a 40 anni, e la previsione del passaggio ai 41 nel 2008.
o dicembre 2007: i lavoratori che godevano regimi speciali (quelli di settori economici strategici come trasporto ed energia) sono stati allineati con il fondo pensionistico generale.
● Lotte operaie contro questi tagli:
o 1995 sciopero di un mese nel PI, contro il tentativo del primo ministro Juppé di estendere ad essi i tagli di Balladur.
o 2003, 1 milione di insegnanti scioperano;
o ottobre novembre 2007 scioperi nel trasporto ed energia contro tagli regimi speciali.
● Finora la borghesia è riuscita a dividere i lavoratori, scontrandosi separatamente con ogni loro strato.
o Il sindacato ha fatto di tutto per non far estendere gli scioperi; è ora argomento di dibattito sui vari media la collaborazione del sindacato con lo Stato; Sarkozy ha apprezzato la riuscita della riforma dei regimi speciali grazie a questa cooperazione.
o La CFDT, dichiarato il proprio appoggio alle manifestazioni di protesta del 22 maggio, si è detta non contraria in linea di principio al prolungamento degli anni contributivi.
o Il conservatore Le Figaro: ha apprezzato la decisione del sindacato di non unirsi alle manifestazioni studentesche del 15 maggio; ritiene un segnale di assunzione di responsabilità se il sindacato contribuisce ad una riforma essenziale come quella delle pensioni.
● Le linee dell’attuale riforma sono state fissate nei tagli del 2003 (primo ministro Raffarin), vi era compreso un aumento nel 2008 degli anni di contributi, “giustificati dall’aumento dell’aspettativa di vita”:
o le riforme concordate dovrebbero passare come semplice decreto esecutivo, senza necessità di una nuova legge.
o previste diverse misure di facciata a favore dei pensionati poveri (pensione di reversibilità al 60% invece del 56%; pensione ad almeno l’85% del salario minimo (SMIC), per chi abbia lavorato per un salario minimo per gli anni di contributi richiesto, ma questi lavoratori hanno spesso lunghi periodi di occupazione irregolare o a tempo parziale).
– I lavoratori oltre i 57 anni, spesso costretti al pre-pensionamento per consentire l’assunzione di lavoratori più giovani e con salari inferiori, (che in Francia sono il 38,1% degli ultra 55, contro il 43,6% della media UE), finora se licenziati potevano godere dell’assicurazione contro la disoccupazione fino all’età pensionabile, e non erano costretti a trovarsi un lavoro (DRE, Dispensa della Ricerca di Impiego).
– La riforma prevede ora aumenti non specificati dell’età minima per la Dispensa, e con penalità previste del 5% per ogni trimestre di contribuzione mancante, questo significa drastici tagli alle pensioni di milioni di lavoratori.
– Tutte le 5 maggiori confederazioni sindacali francesi nel pubblico e nel privato manifestano oggi contro i 41 anni di contributi per la pensione – CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC, CFE-CGC, FSU, Solidaires e Unsa; parola d’ordine: difesa della pensione solidale.
– Doppio test per il governo: sull’efficacia del sevizio minimo imposto nei trasporti, sulla sua capacità di tenuta di fronte alla piazza.
– Al massimo della contestazione contro la riforma Fillon del 2003, avevano manifestato 1-2 mn. di persone; Force Ouvrière spera oggi in almeno 500mila.
– Nei trasporti Ferrovie e trasporto urbano parigino il governo ha imposto lo scorso autunno, con alcune concessioni, la riforma dei regimi speciali, nonostante i 9 giorni di sciopero.
– La SNCF comunica che circolerà 1 treno su 2; preavvisi di sciopero in 53 reti urbane. Nel privato la partecipazione è prevista forte.
– Il PS è per il mantenimento dello status quo, 40 anni di contribuzione e pensione a 60 anni.
Retraite : l’épreuve de la rue
Olivier Auguste et Claire Bommelaer
Les syndicats manifestent ce jeudi contre les 41 ans de cotisation.
La barre est placée haut. Pour cette journée d’action et de manifestations des syndicats contre le projet gouvernemental sur les retraites, présenté fin avril, le secrétaire général de Force ouvrière, Jean-Claude Mailly, «espère plus de 500 000 manifestants». À la CGT, pas d’objectif précis, mais on espère que les participants aux défilés se compteront en centaines de milliers. À titre de «référence», au plus fort de la contestation contre la réforme Fillon de 2003, les manifestations avaient rassemblé entre un et deux millions de personnes.
– Aujourd’hui, c’est l’ensemble des syndicats qui appelle à manifester, dans le public comme dans le privé, pour s’opposer à l’allongement à 41 ans de la durée de cotisation nécessaire pour toucher une retraite à taux plein. Les cinq confédérations (CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC, CFE-CGC), la FSU, Solidaires et l’Unsa ont fixé comme mot d’ordre «la défense de la retraite solidaire». À Paris, le cortège partira de Bastille à 14 h 30, direction Saint-Augustin.
– Pour le gouvernement et l’Élysée, cette journée a l’allure d’un double test. Elle montrera l’efficacité ou l’inutilité de l’instauration d’un service minimum dans les transports, un dossier phare porté dans la foulée de la présidentielle. Elle montrera également sa capacité à tenir face à la rue.
À la veille de cette journée de mobilisation, l’Élysée ne tenait évidemment pas à faire de pari sur le nombre de manifestants. Mais, tout en estimant qu’il faut «laisser les uns et les autres s’exprimer», l’entourage du président de la République se montre ferme. Alors que le Parti socialiste a réitéré hier son soutien au mouvement et rappelé «son attachement, en l’état actuel, à l’accès à une retraite à 60 ans moyennant 40 annuités de cotisation», l’Élysée rappelle comme en écho que «le principe de la réforme a été réaffirmé pendant la campagne présidentielle et que l’engagement de réformer les retraites tient à cœur à la majorité».
– «Tout cela n’exclut pas un passage en douceur et de bonnes relations avec les organisations syndicales», ajoute-t-on dans l’entourage de Sarkozy. Les thèmes de frictions entre les syndicats et le chef de l’État sont potentiellement nombreux pouvoir d’achat, 35 heures, colère des marins-pêcheurs, offre «raisonnable» d’emploi… , mais l’Élysée rappelle que «le président de la République a la légitimité populaire» pour agir.
«Comme au moment de la réforme des régimes spéciaux, notre détermination est entière. Mais j’ai toujours le même souci de maintenir le dialogue, car beaucoup de sujets, comme l’emploi des seniors, restent encore ouverts», explique de son côté Xavier Bertrand, le ministre du Travail.
Hier soir sur France 2, François Fillon s’est dit, quant à lui, «très attentif» à la journée d’aujourd’hui. Mais il a aussi laissé entendre qu’il maintiendrait le cap. «La question a été tranchée en 2003 et le passage à 41 ans de cotisation a été acté par un accord», a-t-il rappelé.
– Malgré des nuances essentielles entre eux sur le fond (voir ci-dessous), les syndicats se veulent également très déterminés.
– Dans la fonction publique, il leur sera peut-être difficile de remobiliser pour la deuxième fois en une semaine. La mobilisation s’annonce moyenne à la SNCF ou à la RATP, où le gouvernement est parvenu à imposer non sans concessions la réforme des régimes spéciaux à l’automne, malgré neuf jours de grève.
– La SNCF annonce qu’elle fera circuler en moyenne un train sur deux. La RATP prévoit un trafic quasi normal sur l’ensemble des réseaux de bus, métro et RER à l’exception de la ligne B, où un train sur deux circulera. Des préavis de grève ont été déposés dans 53 autres réseaux de transports urbains, dont ceux de Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Rouen, Nancy, Nantes ou Grenoble. Air France précise que les vols intérieurs de et vers Orly pourraient être touchés.
En revanche, dans le privé, «incontestablement la participation sera très forte», assure le M. Retraite de la CGT, Jean-Christophe Le Duigou. «Plusieurs centaines d’arrêts de travail» auraient été déposées dans des secteurs comme la métallurgie, la chimie ou l’agroalimentaire.
By Kumaran Ira and Alex Lantier
– On April 28, French Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand met with trade unions and employers’ organizations to set out guidelines for another round of pension cuts. The centerpiece of the plan is pushing the required pay-in period for all workers, both in the public and private sectors, to 41 years from the current 40 years by 2012. This confirms the orientation set by President Nicolas Sarkozy in his April 24 TV interview, in which he said the only solution was to “work and pay in longer.”
– The main lines of the current pension reform are mandated by the 2003 pension cuts carried out under then-Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, including an increase in 2008 of the mandatory pay-in period if there were no major change in demographic trends. As a result, it is expected that the reforms laid out by the “social partners”—the unions and employers’ organizations—and the state will be passed by simple executive decree, requiring no new law in parliament. After the April 28 meeting, Bertrand published an initial draft of reforms, titled “2008 Rendez-vous on pensions.”
The draft states that the pay-in period increase is “justified due to the increase in life expectancy noted by the INSEE [National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies]. The pension plans’ worsening financial situation reinforces its necessity.”
– The draft also announces several minor, largely cosmetic measures to help poorer retirees. One required pensions to pay 60 percent of the pension amount to the spouse of a deceased retiree by 2011, up from 56 percent. Another required the pension system to pay a worker who has worked on full-time minimum wage (SMIC) for the entire required pay-in period at least 85 percent of the SMIC—a measure affecting relatively few minimum wage workers, who often have long periods of irregular or part-time employment.
– Of particular importance in this reform are the employment conditions for workers over age 57, who are often forced to take early retirements so companies can hire younger, cheaper workers and minimize their pension payments. One sign of this is the employment rate for people over 55—38.1 percent in France, as opposed to a European Union[e] average of 43.6 percent. Until now, these workers have been granted a Dispensation from Job Seeking (Dispensation de Recherche d’Emploi—DRE). Upon being dismissed, they were allowed to go on unemployment insurance until they reached the legal retirement age and then still collected normal pensions.
– The draft announces plans for unspecified increases in the minimum age at which a DRE can be granted. With French pension plans imposing harsh financial penalties on workers who fail to meet the required pay-in period—5 percent of the pension amount per missing quarter of year—such plans would drastically cut pensions for millions of workers.
– Throughout this collaboration between the trade unions and the French ruling elite, the sums at stake have remained somewhat hidden from public view. What is being prepared, however, is a massive transfer of funds from working class retirees to the coffers of the state and, ultimately, the bottom lines of French corporations.
– According to the INSEE, France has approximately 13.5 million retirees, or 20 percent of the population. Each year roughly 500,000 workers retire, a figure expected to increase to 700,000 as the baby boom generation retires. In 2006 expenditure on pensions was roughly €235 billion, of which over €230 billion came from employee and employer contributions, with the remaining €4.2 billion paid by the state.
– In statistical documents prepared in November 2007, the state’s Orientation Council on Pensions (COR) forecasted that, despite substantial increases in the retiree population, the portion of GDP spent on pensions would be held constant at 13 percent in the future. Accepting this assumption, pension financing would be in deficit by €15.1 billion in 2015, €47.1 billion in 2030, and €68.8 billion by 2050. Underlying this assumption, however, is the determination of the French bourgeoisie to spend as little as it proves politically feasible to spend on pensions.
– In its attempt to minimize pension payments, the French bourgeoisie has hit on the idea of lengthening the required pay-in period, to increase financial penalties on workers as the lengths of their careers fall ever further behind the required pay-in period.
– The first such reform, by Prime Minister Edouard Balladur in 1993, made private sector workers pass from a 37.5-year to a 40-year pay-in period. The second, by Raffarin in 2003, forced workers in the general public sector pension fund to pass from a pay-in period of 37.5 to 40 years, with a planned passage from 40 to 41 years in 2008. Last December, the government aligned public sector workers with “special regime” pensions—those working in strategic sectors of the economy such as transport and energy—on the general fund.
● As a result of these reforms, according to a study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OCDE), the percentage of retiring workers’ final wage that they receive as a pension has passed from 64.7 percent to 51.2 percent.
– The French working class has met these cuts with vigorous attempts to defend its living standards. In 1995, public sector workers largely shut down the country with a month-long strike against Prime Minister Alain Juppé’s attempt to extend Balladur’s cuts to them.
– Teachers led a million-strong strike of public sector workers against the 2003 cuts, and the transport and energy workers mounted strikes in October and November of last year against the special regime pensions reform. However, the French ruling class has worked successfully to split up the working class, and dealt with each section in turn.
– The central obstacle to a successful defense of pension rights has been the trade union[e] leadership. Far from seeking to alert workers to the long-term danger they faced and thus to wage a political struggle in complete opposition to the bourgeoisie and its representatives, the trade union[e] bureaucracies have consistently fought to prevent strikes from spreading, bring them to a close, and then negotiate concessions deals with the state.
– The collaboration between trade unions and the state is now publicly discussed in the corporate media. As Sarkozy wrote in an April 18 editorial in Le Monde, “Right after the presidential elections [of May 2007], even before going to the Elysée [presidential palace], I met with trade unions and business groups to listen to them and ask for their positions on the first actions I was planning on taking. Since then, I have continued to very regularly meet with each of their representatives…. The reform of the special regime pensions [was] successfully carried out last fall, thanks to an intense period of coordination at a national level, and negotiations in each enterprise affected by the reform.”
– Jean-Christophe Le Duigou, a top official at the Stalinist-dominated CGT (General Confederation of Labor, France’s largest union), replied with an interview in the Financial Times praising Sarkozy: “He understands that we must give a place to social dialogue. We are at a turning point in the social situation of our country. Everyone believes that things must change.”
Under such conditions, all class-conscious workers must be aware of the trap being set for them by the CGT and CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labor), as the unions announce plans for a demonstration on May 22 against pension cuts. In conditions where Sarkozy’s popularity is plummeting and economic difficulties are mounting, such a call may meet a significant response. However, the goal of the trade union[e] bureaucracy will be to let off political steam and to provide an illusion of struggle against the government—while plotting with Sarkozy behind the backs of the workers.
– Shortly after the CFDT announced its support for the demonstrations, its pension negotiator Gaby Bonnard admitted, “we are not hostile in principle to a lengthening of the pay-in period.”
In a May 1 editorial, the conservative daily Le Figaro praised the unions’ decision not to join its demonstration with the May 15 high school students’ protest marches. It wrote of the May 22 marches, “We hope they are, from the unions’ point of view, an honorable last stand against a reform that is difficult, but essential for our country.” It added, “The real subject for the trade unions is in fact elsewhere. They must prolong the extraordinary renewal of social manners in France of which they are the motive force…. Contributing to such an essential reform as that of the pensions, already carried out everywhere else, would send a signal that they have definitely assumed their responsibilities.”
To that, the working class need only add, “their responsibilities to the bourgeoisie.” In fact, what Sarkozy and the bourgeois media are artlessly revealing is the utter prostration of the union[e] bureaucrats, and by extension of all their hangers-on in the leaderships of the left and pseudo-Trotskyist “far left” parties.
– Workers can dismiss the hypocritical assertion that there is no money for pensions. The state protests against spending €4.2 billion on pensions, one year after Sarkozy gave a 10 percent tax cut to the top income tax bracket costing €15 billion per year. The projected pension deficit of €69 billion—over 40 years from now—is smaller than last year’s profit for the CAC-40 index of the 40 largest French enterprises, which stood at €100 billion.
Above all, a political party must be formed to coordinate the struggle against the government’s program of social cuts and its co-conspirators in the trade union[e] leadership. The World Socialist Web Site puts forward an international socialist perspective to advance this fight among French workers and students.
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