Unite students and teachers to defeat Sarkozy!
A report from B.Rienzi, a lecturer at Tours in France
Everyone agrees that the participation of higher education teachers in the movement to reject the two changes to the law (the status of Lecturer-Researchers and masterisation of the CAPES teacher-training course) and to refuse the 1030 planned job losses, is impressive and almost unprecedented in terms of both the numbers of teachers involved and their level of commitment.
Take, for example, Tours, where the majority of teaching staff from the faculties of Literature & Languages, Arts and Humanities have been withholding grades since the December-January midterm exams, and have been on strike since February. Staff have a high attendance at national demonstrations, and having been showing a great deal of initiative in popularising and publicising the movement, notably towards their colleagues in secondary education.
This radicalism is a welcome surprise- we must remember that last year there was very little staff participation in the student movement against the LRU1, which was the origin of the current counter-reforms. It is clearly demonstrated by the determination of the ‘Coordination Nationale Universitaire’ (National University Coordination), which has recently held its fifth nation assembly and is constantly increasing its level of mobilisation. Here they have added the repeal of the LRU to their list of demands before real negotiations can begin.
This resolute attitude is doubtless the reason that despite certain minority trade unions (SGEN-CFDT, Autonome-Sup, FO, UNSA), the very bureaucratic Snesup-Fsu, the largest organisation of the sector, has not yet been able to negotiate with the government as that would go against the motions of the National Coordination.
It is imperative to refuse all negotiations until the LRU has been withdrawn, along with the afore-mentioned job losses and counter-reforms, because when the repeal of the CPE2 was won in 2006 against Villepin3 and Chirac’s government, it was won through the force of that movement, and by preventing negotiation on the part of the unions.
Nonetheless, the teaching staff’s movement does have clear weaknesses- for example, the Coordination has so far refused to create an administrative structure for itself, due to the risk of ‘takeover’.
This makes it difficult to fully centralise and coordinate the struggle to achieve a complete University strike which reaches out to all concerned (students, technical and administrative staff), and to all National Education from nurseries to universities, and which could eventually converge with the social movements that are rising up more and more often in this country (for example what started in Guadeloupe and is continuing in Martinique and La Réunion).
As we know, so-called ‘radical’ attitudes consisting of refusing any centralisation and organisation of movements in favour of spontaneity have often paved the way for the bureaucratic political and unionist machines in the left to prevent general strike, preserve the bourgeois state and keep the workers’ movement enclosed within legality and electoralism. (We can see this, for example, within a close study of the movement of May ’68.)
In the case of the current powerful movement, and bearing in mind the economic, social and political context of the financial crisis, the Sarkozy government’s loss of credibility and the rise in general dissatisfaction, certain conditions are imperative in order to win, and to inflict a defeat on Sarkozy which will mark the beginning of a workers’ counter-offensive that opens viewpoints on revolutionary issues. We must create unified committees of students, teachers and staff everywhere. We must federate these groups into a Central Strike Committee, working with all of the higher education sector and with other public and private sector movements. This will be equally important in order to fight police repression, which has begun to come down heavily on striking students.One last local example: last Tuesday the President of Tours University4 locked the University out, in order to break the strike, and called in private security guards who were violent towards striking students. National police in full riot gear were called to the building. If the police retired without intervention, it was due solely to a picket line of students, teachers and other staff, who shouted slogans against police repression. The picket also forced the President to remove the security guards and reopen the faculty, so students could occupy it once again. IN TOURS, AS EVERYWHERE, ONLY A UNITED AND DETERMINED STRUGGLE PAYS OFF!
[1] ‘Loi relative aux libertés et responsabilités des universités’, the ‘reforms’ contested last year but still on the table, which challenged universities’ financial and academic independence.
[2] ‘Contrat Première Embauche’, a controversial plan to tackle youth unemployment by drastically reducing the working rights of workers under 26 years old. After a massive popular movement, plans for the CPE were withdrawn.
[3] Prime Minister 2005- 2007
[4] Loïc Vaillant