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French Workers Call General Strike For Nov 5th French trade unions have distanced themselves from calls for more demonstrations this coming Saturday and instead workers will join a coordinated nationwide day of strikes and rallies on November 5th. France hasn’t managed to balance a budget in 50 years. French workers are militant so the state has had to provide the highest social wage in Europe. A social wage is the services a worker gets like subsidized public transport, a decent public health system, early retirement and free university education. But the neoliberal French establishment didn’t want to hit the capitalist class with taxes to fund that social wage, the result has been an indebted French state that can’t balance a budget. The state is afraid of the population, while it stubbornly refuses to take wealth from its masters in the boss class. This borrowing strategy only worked when interest rates were low and economic growth steady. Pandemic spending, the cost of living and energy crisis and the subsequent spike in interest rates completely smashed this debt driven model. This is why Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu unveiled a massive €54 billion “belt-tightening” budget. This followed a multi-billion euro squeeze started under the previous government, all to pacify greedy international bond markets. School budgets were squeezed, triggering the initial student anger over overcrowded classrooms and teacher shortages. That’s why this round of protests began. Austerity is looting by the state on behalf of capitalist bondholders. The French state was looting before anyone took to the streets. The French police were rioting when the protests were peaceful, attacking protests. Forcing teenagers into overcrowded, decaying classrooms with a severe shortage of teachers is violence. Cutting funding for healthcare, targeting sick leave and freezing pensions for old workers is violence. Freezing wages during an inflation crisis is a form of state-sanctioned theft and violence. The upcoming “Major Inter-Union Day of Strike” on Thursday November 5th will see a total shutdown of the French economy by workers. Workers have the power to stop work, shut down the economy and do real harm to the bosses. The French Prime Minister met with unions to try to prevent the strike but the day of action is still going ahead. An alliance of the five largest French union federations has signed up to strike representing almost two million workers. The workers’ demands are to kill the budget, raise wages, fund public services and to stop layoffs. The movement is evolving away from student and youth protests to conflict with the state using worker power over production. A general strike by workers is the most powerful form of protest as it shows workers have control over the whole economy and can shut it down. This shift is a double edged sword because while the unions bring the mass might of the working class to bear on the government, union bureaucrats everywhere are inclined to compromise. But that doesn’t mean falling into the false opposition of street militancy versus big worker strikes in the hands of the bureaucracy. French workers, like workers everywhere, need to fight for control over their unions. Then a worker strike movement accompanied by mass worker protests can force any government to do what workers want. The May 1968 French strike wave involved over 10 million workers. France isn’t there yet. The coming 2027 French elections will see the movement on the streets and in the workplaces become a battle at the ballot box. The establishment will try to use the elections to give the system breathing space. Marine Le Pen helps the establishment by repeating law and order soundbites and urging workers to abstain from protests and strikes. This is why the most militant workers need their own party. So the electoral diversion tactic doesn’t work and elections can then be a platform to re-ignite working class resistance to the French state. Here in Ireland our establishment can use a big corporate surplus and compliant union leaders to divert anger into safe channels for the system. But the cost of living crisis is escalating here too and the massive strike on Oct 14th 2026 shows the potential and power of workers. We too have a breaking point. Putting workers in the driving seat of social movements, putting workers in the driving seat of our unions, that’s the only way confrontation with the establishment will lead to our class, the working class, being in the driving seat of a socialist, planned economy where we call the shots and the cost of living crisis is a distant memory. https://rednetwork.net/articles/2026/10/french-workers-call-general-strike-for-nov-5th/? Back |
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