Post by AGAINST GODLESS SOCIALISMFrench PM backs Obama in US presidential race
(AFP) – October 24, 2012
PARIS — French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has broken with
diplomatic protocol by openly expressing his hope that Barack Obama
wins the upcoming US presidential election.
"If I was an American citizen I wouldn't hesitate to vote for Obama,"
he told a radio interviewer on Wednesday.
While it is hardly surprising that Ayrault, a Socialist, would support
the Democrat candidate in a US election, prudence normally restricts
politicians from making such remarks given the possibility they will
end up having to deal with their Republican rivals.
Ayrault is not however the first French minister to offer public
support for Obama in his neck-and-neck battle with Republican Mitt
Romney.
"As far as I'm concerned, I totally support it (Obama's re-election)
and I would be astonished if the government had any other wish."
President Francois Hollande was less explicit when he was asked who he
would support during a visit to New York at the end of last month,
restricting himself to a rhetorical: "Who would you think?"
http://www.truthandgrace.com/obama.htm
Mass layoffs mount under Socialist Party government in France
By Pierre Mabut
5 October 2012
The mass destruction of jobs is proceeding rapidly under the French
Socialist Party (PS) government of President François Hollande.
Steelmaker ArcelorMittal announced on October 1 the definitive closure
of its two blast furnaces at Florange in the Moselle area of eastern
France, costing 629 workers their jobs out of the 2,500 workforce. The
furnaces at Florange have been at a standstill for fourteen months,
while different governments led the workers to believe that
ArcelorMittal would remain in the region. The company is also set to
close its blast furnaces at Liège in Belgium, with the loss of 795
jobs.
The company has two remaining plants in France, at Fos-sur-Mer near
Marseille and Dunkirk.
The PS Minister for Industrial Recovery Arnaud Montebourg reassured
big business that nationalisation of the plant was definitely not an
option. He declared, “every time we have nationalised, the state has
not been a very good manager”. This refers to the capitalist PS
government’s nationalisation of the steel industry in the 1980s, when
the PS pushed through tens of thousands of layoffs, devastating the
region.
Today unemployment stands at 15 percent in Florange—well above the
national figure of 10 percent—and the legacy of the previous PS
government has given rise to the influence of the fascist National
Front (FN) in the region.
Montebourg instead claimed to have a promise from the CEO Lakshmi
Mittal to postpone the closure for two months while the government
tries to find a buyer for the blast furnaces, leaving the rolling
mills in ArcelorMittals hands. Any takeover is considered highly
unlikely in the current recession, which has seen a 25 percent
reduction in demand for steel in France since the 2008 crisis.
The PS government’s so-called industrial recovery is to be based on a
new law presented to parliament next week by Montebourg, which will
oblige companies seeking to shut down production facilities to accept
offers from potential buyers. This is, however, only political cover
for the PS to continue attacking jobs and workers’ living standards.
New buyers of distressed industrial facilities will seek to cut wages
and benefits, in line with the PS’ pursuit of industrial
“competitiveness” with super-exploited labour in low-wage countries.
The PS government is continuing the basic lines of the industrial
policy as its predecessor, President Nicolas Sarkozy. He promised to
keep ArcelorMittal’s Gandrange steel plant open, only to let it shut
with 1,000 layoffs in Moselle.
President François Hollande has already given the green light for the
shutdown of PSA Peugeot-Citroën car plant at Aulnay near Paris and the
layoff of 8,000 workers nationally. It is calling for an alliance with
General Motors which has slashed wages and jobs on a massive scale in
the US, aided by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
French-owned car makers’ sales plummeted in September by 18 percent,
and an annual drop of 12 percent is forecast. Sales fell 5 percent for
PSA and 33.4 percent for Renault; the two auto manufacturers currently
have only 53.5 percent of the French market.
On September 27, the opening day of the International Automobile Show
in Paris, Carlos Ghosn the head of Renault demanded sacrifices from
workers: “The improvement of French competitiveness is a question of
survival for Renault”. Workers at Renault’s Sevelnord plant in
northern France have been forced to accept a wage freeze and the
worsening of working conditions.
Another dire warning came from PSA CEO Philippe Varin in Les Echos
business newspaper, who said that after the closure of the Aulnay
plant, “Other auto makers will have to shut factories” in Europe.
Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has called for a reduction in European car
production capacity.
Prior to the Automobile Show opening, Montebourg issued a nationalist
diatribe against South Korean car makers Hyundai and Kia, accusing
them of “social dumping”. The French government wants the EU
Commission to halt the penetration of Korean cars into the EU,
although the most of their production takes place in Eastern Europe
under the type of working conditions Montebourg would like to see
adopted in France.
Last Monday Brittany Ferries, the biggest company operating the
English Channel crossings, called off its lockout lasting ten days of
its 1,300 employees. The CGT (General Confederation of Labour) and
CFDT (French Democratic Labour Confederation) unions had organised a
ballot to force acceptance of cost-cutting measures.
The company’s eight ferries remained in port during the lockout. The
unions called a one-day strike against company plans to cut labour
costs, and the company responded with a lockout. While only 900
workers participated in the phone-in vote, 58.68 percent voted for the
return-to-work protocol. Le Monde reported that “management has tied
the resumption of ferry traffic to the signature of the unions to the
plan for a return to competitiveness”.
Junior Minister for Transport and Maritime Economy Frédéric Cuvillier
hailed “this initiative and recognises the results of the consultation
of the personnel as creating the conditions of an early return to
work.”
The co-operation of the unions and the petty-bourgeois “left” forces
such as the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) is crucial to these cost
cutting plans by employers. Having supported the election of Hollande,
they are now opposing any attempt to mobilize the working class for a
mass industrial struggle against the cuts, arguing for a strategy of
pressuring the PS government through minor protests or legal action.
This strategy is ineffective and politically bankrupt, reflecting the
support of the unions and the NPA for Hollande.
Another victim of employers, government and trade union collusion are
the 52 women workers at the Sodimédical plant in the Aube department
of southern France, who lost their legal battle to keep their jobs
after 30 months of struggle.
The trade unions and “left” groups promoted illusions that the
incoming PS government would intervene with a law forbidding
profitable companies from firing workers. They invented the term
“stock market layoffs” to designate companies laying off workers to
boost profits. On October 1, however, the courts ruled in the
company’s favour.
The company is part of the profitable Lohmann and Rauscher
corporation, which specializes in textiles for medical uses. It
switched its production orders from France to its Chinese plant,
closing the Aube plant.
The courts initially instructed the company to pay the women’s
salaries held back since October 2011 and to re-employ them. Catherine
Berlin, the deputy secretary of the women’s factory committee summed
up the women’s anger: “The Justice Minister, the Minister for
Industrial Recovery, François Hollande, all of them told us this
summer that they would support us to get that decision enforced. But
we got nothing. Under the right wing [President Sarkozy] we suffered.
Under the left [i.e., the PS] it is worse, because we have lost our
jobs. We are disgusted, we have a feeling of injustice”.