Police battle Sorbonne protesters : Melbourne Indymedia

Police battle Sorbonne protesters

Pic: Handcuffed students on the pavement near Sorbonne, Paris, IMAGINE maybe Koori youth here in Melboring this week during the Stolenwealth Games Spectacle. WHAT U GONNA DO WHEN THE COME FOR YOU - "You're going home inthe back of a divvy van" oi What?

Police storm building
French riot police have grappled with protesters at the Sorbonne in Paris in unrest over a new labour law, making it easier to sack young employees.

Police stormed the university early on Saturday to drive out at least 150 people, mainly students, some of whom had been inside for three days.

They used tear gas and batons to clear the main building in under 10 minutes, correspondents report.

At least two people were injured and some arrests were made.

In '68, the students when they left university, they found work
Elodie
Parisian student

About 40 of France's 84 universities saw student occupations to varying degrees on Friday in protest at the new law, according to French news agency AFP.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has cut short a visit to France's Caribbean Antilles Islands because of the student unrest, his entourage said.

The First Employment Contract (CPE) passed by parliament on Thursday is a two-year contract for under-26-year-olds which employers can break off at any time without explanation.

Ministers hope the flexibility will encourage employers to hire more young people, safe in the knowledge that they will be able to get rid of them if they have to.

Critics say younger workers would have less job security than older colleagues and France's generous labour provisions would be undermined.

The new legislation currently only applies to small firms but some fear it could be misused by larger employers and make it even harder for young people to find a permanent job.

Extinguishers and books

Nicolas Boudot, a local educational authority administrator, said about 300 people had entered the Sorbonne on Friday by breaking windows and not all of them were students.

Students vote for strike action at Nantes University
Students at Nantes University are among those on strike

The protesters, he said, were trying to turn the Sorbonne into a battlefield for fighting social woes.

Other students had been inside the building since Wednesday as part of the students' strike.

Riot police in the square outside the university fired tear gas shortly after midnight (2330 GMT Friday) after being pelted with objects including fire extinguishers from upper-storey windows of the university.

The police moved in to pull away a barricade from the main doors, all the while under a hail of projectiles.

After withdrawing, about 80 officers returned just before 0400 (0300 GMT), apparently getting into the main building by a back door before driving out the protesters.

The police reportedly acted on a request from the educational authorities.

Police also used batons on students at a road-block near the university on Friday.

Protesters had marched around the building shouting "The Sorbonne belongs to students!"

Concern

The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, has said he is "deeply concerned" about the use of force by police against the protest, which he said had been passing off peacefully.

At least 100,000 people protested in cities across France on Tuesday against the new law, disrupting airports and public services.

The overnight violence has echoes of the labour and student unrest of 1968 in Paris.

One Parisian student, named only as Elodie, told AFP it was not a conscious attempt to repeat those riots.

"The context is different," she said. "In '68, the students when they left university, they found work."
from wsws
Close to one million students and workers demonstrated March 7 in 160 protests thoughout France against the CPE (First Job Contract) provision being implemented by the Gaullist government. Twice as many people participated as in a mobilization held February 7 to protest the measure.

The CPE gives employers the right to sack workers without cause for the first two years of their employment. It covers workers under 26, and is part of a package of measures contained in the so-called Equal Opportunities Law. Other provisions reduce the statutory school leaving age to 14 for failing pupils and withdraw benefits from parents of absentee school children According to opinion polls, 65 percent of the French people support the demonstrations against the CPE.

The mobilisation was endorsed by all of the student unions and trade unions, and supported by the main parents’ federation, the Federation of Pupils’ Parents Councils, and by the official left parties as well as the so-called “far left” parties. In addition to student strikes at universities and high schools, sections of workers responded to strike notices issued by the unions—the FSU (Federation of Unitary Unions), the Socialist Party-orientated Force Ouvrière (Workers Power), and the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), which is allied to the Communist Party

Several radio stations went off the air, flights were cancelled at several airports, and up to 30 per cent of teachers struck. In some cities urban transport was disrupted.

Despite the scale of the protests, the Equal Opportunities Law was passed on its second reading in the National Assembly March 9 and the government has said CPE contracts will start to be signed by mid-April.

Throughout the holiday period between the mobilization of February 7 and day of action on March 7, high school and university students carried out strikes and demonstrations Despite this, and despite the increase in the number of demonstrators in this week’s protests, the official demands that were raised were scaled back from the earlier action.

The February 7 demonstrations featured the demand for the repeal of CNE (New-Hire Contract) alongside the demand for the withdrawal of the CPE. The CNE, which came into force last summer, with virtually no organised opposition from the unions, also provides a two-year trial period during which bosses can fire workers without cause. It covers workers in firms employing fewer than 19 people, a sector that accounts for 3.5 million workers nationally. On March 7, there were virtually no banners or placards demanding the repeal of the CNE.

In Paris, the Socialist Party was more in evidence at this week’s demonstration than on February 7, as was its youth movement the MJS (Young Socialist Movement). In Amiens, the Communist Party, through the CGT and the Young Communists, played the leading role. At the head of the Amiens demonstration of some 3,500, a group of youth brandished CGT flags.

The anxiety and anger of the youth against the government are matched by the determination of the Socialist Party, Communist Party and trade union bureaucracies to limit the opposition movement to the single issue of the CPE.

On March 9, a joint meeting of university and high school students’ organisations with all the main union federations issued a declaration calling for another national day of protest against the CPE on March 18 The students had told the meeting they were calling a national strike for Thursday, March 16 at the universities and the high schools, and proposed that the unions call a national strike along with them However, no trade union body is calling its members out with the students on March 16.

This underscores the determination of the unions and the Socialist and Communist parties to prevent the protests broadening into a mass movement against the government and its programme of social reaction and attacks on democratic rights.

BACKGROUND

WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : France
Mass strikes by French public sector workers 22 January 2005

More than five million public sector workers throughout France have held strike action and organized demonstrations this week in a movement that expresses growing anger at the policies of the Chirac government. Tens of thousands of teachers, hospital, postal, electricity and gas workers marched through Paris in defence of the public services, pay and jobs. One of their banners read: “For a quality public service, raise salaries.”

Demonstrations also took place in French provincial towns. In Clermont-Ferrand more than 5,000 teachers, Bank of France employees, hospital staff and teachers marched through the streets.

Railway workers are protesting against plans to slash 3,590 jobs. If implemented the cuts would mean that since September 2000, 12,000 railway workers have been made redundant. This has resulted in more stressful working conditions for the remaining workers and a reduction in the quality of service. In 2004 there were 3,300 jobs cut, in addition to 1,300 in 2003. In October 2004, rail unions signed an agreement designed to prevent further industrial conflicts at the SNCF.

In the first days of the current strike only one in four intercity trains ran as scheduled, with an estimated 40 percent of workers participating. During the last national strike day in May 2004, 25 percent of the workers participated. On the morning of January 18, many scheduled railway services were hit by the strike, with only one of three TVG trains running. Only one of eight Thalys-trains was able to run and the Corail national rail service was totally suspended.

The France-Italy Artesia service was only running one of three trains and the France-Switzerland Lyria, three of five services. On January 19, SNCF, the French rail company said that two-thirds of high-speed TGV trains, 75 percent of intercity trains and 80 percent of Paris suburban services would be cancelled.

This followed three days of protest by 300,000 postal workers who are opposing privatisation. The government plans to introduce competition into deliveries and to close between 10,000 and 17,000 smaller post offices. This measure is expected to lead to thousands of job losses.

In Paris on the afternoon of January 18, a demonstration took place involving 700 people. At a rally outside Parliament, workers chanted slogans including, “Public service yes! Privatisation no!” Further demonstrations were held in Marseille, Nantes and Saint-Brieuc, Orléans, Rennes, Lille and Tours. The CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail), SUD, FO (Force Ouvrière) and CFTC (Conf. Francaise des Travailleurs Chrétiens), which represent 78 percent of postal employees, called the national strike on January 19. According to postal trade union estimates, about a quarter of their members participated.

Electricity and gas employees struck on January 19. They are opposing several thousand job losses in the power utilities. Trade unions estimate that from 2005 to 2007 some 12,000 to 15,000 jobs will be eliminated. The union Fédération des Mines et de l`Enérgie of the CGT (FNME-CGT), representing the majority of workers, called the 24-hour strike. The FO trade union called a four hour strike of its members.

Strike participation varied at different branches of the power industries, ranging from 30 to 70 percent. At midday electricity production was reduced by about 10,000 megawatts due to the action, a 10 percent cut in national power output.

During the day, a demonstration was held at the Ministry of Industry and Finance attended by some 1,000 electricity and gas workers. A further 170 employees demonstrated in the city of Lyon.

Justice workers and officials held a demonstration on January 18 at midday near the National Assembly in Paris. On January 19, the Syndicat de la magistrature trade union held a one-day strike of its members to protest the “anti relapse law” and the installation of proximity judges and the conditions at French prisons, claiming that they do not contribute to the rehabilitation of criminals.

Further strikes on January 19 involved surgeons at public hospitals who held strike action to demand better pay and conditions. Civil servants, psychiatrists and accident and emergency workers at public hospitals stopped work in various disputes to improve pay and job security.

Protests are set to escalate with a nationwide day of action called by the trade unions for February 5 to protest planned government changes to the 35-hour week law. The Chirac government is attempting to keep within public spending and borrowing limits that were laid down by the EU to create the conditions for the introduction of the Euro. As the Euro rises against the dollar and exports are hit it is becoming imperative for French big business that labour costs be cut even further. Chirac wants to extend the working week from its present 35 hours and introduce new “flexible working” laws that will make it easier to sack workers. Social welfare benefits, education and public sector jobs are all under threat.

France: Hundreds of thousands fight attacks on young workers

WorkFrance has been hit with a wave of strikes, protests, marches and university occupations in recent days as workers, students and young people fight a new legal state assault on employment rights, reports Jef Costello for libcom.org news.

The ‘first employment contract’ (Contrat première embauche, or CPE) which was adopted by the senate on the 28th of February removes job security from workers under 26. The French Government has claimed that the only way to reduce chronic youth unemployment is by giving employers the right to sack workers under the age of 26 without notice, compensation or even a reason during the first two years of their employment. This proposal has been widely criticised by students’ unions, trade unions and public opinion. With unemployment amongst under-25s running at 22% many young people feel they have little to lose, even a good degree is no guarantee of finding work.

The vote in the Senate on the CPE was brought forward by a week to pre-empt the national day of protest called by students’ unions for the 7th of March. The day of protest went ahead in spite of this, with 400,000 people attending 160 demonstrations according to police estimates. The demonstrations were mixed with trade unionists, students, the unemployed and education workers. Students from the Lycées (roughly equivalent to secondary schools) were well represented at demonstrations. There have been occupations and strikes country wide, mainly focussed around universities. Roughly half of France’s universities have been occupied, Rennes II university has been blockaded by anti-CPE protesters and strikers since early February. In Tours, several hundred students invaded tracks at the railway station, stopping all trains for three hours on Friday according to the SNCF. On Tuesday 7th the Sorbonne in Paris, a key site in May 1968, which has not been the site of an occupation since was occupied by students. Around 400 students are inside with around 2000 supporters outside. There have also been reports of clashes with riot police in Toulouse.

There has been a call for a day of action by the student’s unions: l'UNSA, la FSU, l'UNEF, Solidaires, la Confédération étudiante, l'UNL et la FIDL, pour les organisations lycéennes et étudiantes. They will be supported by the trade unions CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC and CFE-CGC, which includes all the main federations. Saturday 18th of March has been chosen as a focal point, but in many cases occupations and strikes are continuing as people refuse to settle for a symbolic action and continue to demand change.

The anarcho-syndicalist union grouping the CNT has called for strike action and is calling upon workers to begin indefinite strikes until the legislation is repealed. In Le Havre the CNT local led a march of 7,000 upon the university and blockaded it (see pic, above left and videos, below). The CNT has called for the repeal of CNE (the sister law of the CPE) which was passed last year and applies to workers in small businesses with fewer than 20 employees. The CNT has recognised that these are two sides of the same coin. The CPE is simply the latest measure aimed at reducing workers’ rights in France. These attempts to reduce job security, a process referred to by the CNT as précarisation, are aimed at taming the strongest union culture in Europe and possibly the world.

Le Flic "just following orders" of the Great purger of the Un-French in the ghetoes Minister Psycho Sarkovsky pulped a few students heads today so maybe Monday will see some solidarity strikes against the State at last.

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Friday March 10, 2006
The Guardian

From behind the makeshift barricade of tables, desks and chairs that sealed off the amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, a 21-year-old philosophy student crawled out and made his way down to the wall of riot police that kept watch outside one of France’s most prestigious faculties yesterday.

Florian had been up all night leading angry philosophical debates among the 150 students holding the first “occupation” of the Sorbonne since student protesters took over the building in Paris’s Latin Quarter in 1968. On that occasion, it was Vietnam, Algeria and the antiquated rules of their superiors that spurred students to action. These days, it is something far closer to home: unemployment and a hugely controversial government measure to try to combat it.

The prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, wants to force a measure through France’s parliament designed to alleviate unemployment, paradoxically by making it easier to fire workers aged under 26 years. The measure would introduce a new form of work contract, le contrat de première embauche (first employment contract), which gives employers the right to let employees go after two years. The hope is it will spur employers to hire young people safe in the knowledge they are not obliged to retain them.

But the move has provoked a vigorous backlash. More than 400,000 people joined street demonstrations across France earlier this week, and by early yesterday about half of the country’s 88 universities had been shut down by student sit-ins. Mr de Villepin’s popularity has plummeted, and his refusal to back down could dent his ambitions for next year’s presidential elections.

On Wednesday night, the cobbled streets around the Place de la Sorbonne rang out with muffled cries from the university’s main lecture theatre as students, enraged that the government was ignoring their street protests, overran the faculty and barricaded themselves in. By midnight, the street was filling up with students shouting their support from outside and police riot vans. Sheets painted with slogans against the “CPE” were unfurled from the windows.

“Everyone should have the basic human right to work,” said Florian, who would not give his surname. “But there is no hope for young people in France. The contract is a joke, it protects no one. People are desperate. We feel we have the support of the people in the street but that the government just doesn’t care.”

Behind the barricades, some were shouting from the platforms of their “occupied” student rooms, others were typing and printing out manifestos from faculty computers. Fears that the riot police would overrun the Sorbonne were calmed when the university’s rector ruled that police would have no access. Instead they stood outside – their only act of cruelty being to prevent supporters bringing baguettes inside at 5am. By 9am, they relented and everyone had had a “good protest breakfast”.

For more than a decade, France’s overall unemployment rate has hovered around 10% – one of the highest in western Europe. But it is the punishing level of youth unemployment that sets the country apart. Nearly one in four young French people is out of work, and unemployment among the under-25s has persisted above 20% for a generation.

Although some EU countries in eastern Europe have higher rates, most of these are moving down. France’s rate increased in 2002 and has grown steadily for the past four years. The braindrain is worsening, with desperate young people – including many with good degrees – leaving for other EU countries such as Ireland.

Before lunch yesterday, crowds of anxious, disheartened students had gathered outside the Sorbonne. Many spoke of sending out dozens, sometimes hundreds of CVs and hearing nothing from employers. Others said wearing a Muslim headscarf or not being white considerably reduced job prospects. Those studying political science said they were assured a job for life in France’s generous state sector. “But for most people, being young in France is a hopeless nightmare,” said David Dominé-Cohn, doing a masters in history on the Duke of Bretagne. “This new contract means an employer can say goodbye to a young person for no reason.”

Despite the protests, senators voted 178-127 in favour of the bill yesterday. But even within the ruling conservative party, dissent was stirring. Hervé de Charette, Jacques Chirac’s former foreign minister, told the daily Le Parisien that the measure should be suspended.

The leader of France’s main student union threatened more protests and demanded that Mr de Villepin withdraw the measure. Bruno Julliard told the television channel i-tele: “The more time passes, the costlier it will become for Villepin to back-pedal when there are hundreds of thousands, even millions, of young people in the streets.”

Angry youth

Samir Tris, 22, Tunisian-born, living in Marseilles:

I’ve been looking for a job for five years. It’s hell. All my papers are in order, I’m young and hard working if given a chance, but that means nothing here. Sometimes I’ll get the odd day’s work for Tunisian builders. It’s dangerous, it’s badly paid and cash in hand – €50 (£34) a day if you’re lucky. In the end, last year I went to England and picked strawberries, bent double for hours on end for €1,300 a month, but it was my only hope of keeping myself once I got back to France to carry on walking the streets looking for work.

Marine Payolle, 20, from Herblay, history of art student at the Sorbonne:

All I can do is work for my father’s business transport business in the holidays. There’s no other hope for a job. Because my father has an important job and I’m his daughter, I get my foot in the door. If you’re not related to someone, or well-connected, you can forget it in this country. All my friends send out CVs, but what’s the point? One sent out 50 and heard nothing back. We have to live at home and save up the money our relatives give us for Christmas and birthday to last us the year. Whenever I can practise my English I do, because I hope to leave and go abroad.

Ibrahima Diop, 25, from Senegal, studying management:

It’s a nightmare. For three months last year, I printed out and posted off over 200 perfect CVs to companies, listing my experience, details and including a photo. I speak basic English, I’m studying on a good management course, but over 200 applications yielded three interviews. Racism is acute here. When someone sees you’re black, that’s it. I’m now working two days a week in a food distribution plant and studying two days a week. It’s not what I want to be doing but frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever get the job I want.

Too close for comfort
Féroce is the film Le Pen wanted no one to see. But is it really an incitement to murder? Simon Cropper reports
Tuesday April 23, 2002 The Guardian

It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, but Gilles de Maistre isn't crowing. Like vast numbers of French men and women, the film-maker says he was "devastated" by the success of National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of France's presidential election. But the spontaneous outcry that saw thousands take to the streets (some with placards marked: "I'm ashamed to be French") has ensured interest in De Maistre's political thriller Féroce, released across France last week. Overnight, the film, about a French Arab's attempt to assassinate a far-right leader, has become the most topical movie in the country.

From the project's early stages, De Maistre ran into problems. The budget was modest, but potential backers turned away: "No one wanted to finance the film," he says. "I felt like I was shouting in the middle of the desert." Casting Samy Nacéri (best known for his role behind the wheel of Taxi and Taxi 2) in the lead brought the story star appeal, but after filming, when De Maistre's production company Tetra Media tried to interest distributors, the reactions were cool.

"Lots of them told me I shouldn't talk about the far right, that it no longer exists. I begged them to face up to the fact that its power was growing, that its softer line was attracting more and more voters." The obstacles started to feel like censorship. Then, a fortnight before Féroce was due in cinemas, Le Pen himself tried to block its release. The National Front applied for an injunction against Tetra Media, claiming the film was defamatory and an incitement to murder. The court threw out the request.

Le Pen certainly has good reason to be rattled. Any resemblance between him and Hugues Henry Lègle, leader of the film's fictional far-right party (his surname is a homophone of the French word for eagle) is wholly intentional. Played by veteran actor and film-maker Jean-Marc Thibault, Lègre has the same build, roughly the same age and the same sort of craggy, carnivorous features, while his soundbites have an uncanny Le Pen ring to them.

Again, no accident there: to show how France's far right has made itself "respectable", screenwriter Christophe Graizon sifted through books on the National Front, as well as nationalist speeches and propaganda. Lègre walks the walk and talks the talk. There's a particularly effective scene in the film where he organises a walkabout in a shopping centre, dishing out mollifying bons mots as he passes - a scene sure to ring a bell with anyone who saw, say, TV coverage of Le Pen on walkabout at this year's Salon de l'Agriculture in Paris.

But incitement to murder? Probably not - although murder is certainly uppermost in the mind of the film's protagonist, Alain (Nacéri), a French inner-city Arab in his early 30s who goes undercover to avenge the deaths of his sister and best friend at the hands of the extremists. It's a rather conventional set-up, strongly reminiscent of Donnie Brasco, with the expected soul-searching, identity crises and moral dilemmas that come with undercover work. To pass muster, Alain has to get his hands dirty and put his Muslim faith to one side. He helps to make a murder look like a suicide bomb attack, and later drinks whisky and eats pork with the racist henchmen. More seriously, his resolve waivers when he starts bedding Lègle's gorgeous daughter.

At the inevitable face-off, Lègle growls like the devil incarnate (he even has Satan's moustache and goatee - the most obvious difference from the clean-shaven Le Pen), stalling the would-be assassin by telling him: "The man who kills me will be a man like me." Cut to Alain being physically sick.

De Maistre's film is one of two new French movies revolving around skulduggery in the run-up to an election. The second is Les Araignées de la Nuit (The Spiders of the Night) by eccentric director Jean-Pierre Mocky, a pantomime police thriller in which a mysterious gang sporting spider tattooes goes around bumping off presidential candidates.

But whereas Mocky's political satire feels almost affectionate - in a dig at the similarity between the policies of the real-life candidates, the five non-entities in the film all have nearly identical names - De Maistre hits hard. "To those who voted for Le Pen without realising who he really is," he says, "go and see Féroce. Le Pen has never been more ferocious." Maybe so. But in France, the line that is really likely to sting the most is spoken at the end by Lègle's image consultant: "The real bastard in all this is the voter."