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French Senate Passes Pension Bill
By Steven Erlanger, New York Times
October 26, 2010
France
As hundreds of students demonstrated outside, the French Senate passed the final draft of a bill on Tuesday that raises the minimum age for pension by a vote of 177 to 151.
The final bill, in a text now agreed to by both houses of Parliament, is expected to be passed Wednesday by the National Assembly, where President Nicolas Sarkozy has a clear majority. After examination by the Constitutional Council, the bill is expected to become law in mid-November, and go into effect gradually beginning in July of next year, bringing the age for a minimum pension to 62 from 60 and for a full pension to 67 from 65.
The bill has various exceptions for manual laborers and women who take successive maternity leaves, and it includes a promise of a new debate on a more comprehensive review of the French pension system sometime in 2013, after the next presidential elections.
More important for the government, the union stranglehold on refineries and fuel depots began to weaken, with more gasoline available for filling stations. Walkouts at several oil refineries ended Tuesday morning, with four of France’s 12 refineries now functioning. Strikes at major ports, like Marseille, still prevented crude oil from reaching some refineries. France continued to import fuel at four times the usual rate to help supply gasoline stations.
Train services were nearly normal, and garbage collectors in Marseille returned to work after a two-week strike facing at least 10,000 tons of malodorous refuse.
The unions have called another national strike for Thursday and another for Nov. 6. But at this point the government apparently feels it can wait out the demonstrations, which appear to be softening and may soften further after the National Assembly casts its final vote.
Despite a weeklong school break that some analysts thought would siphon students off from protests, about 1,000 turned out to demonstrate in front of the 17th century Senate building. Carrying banners that read, “Sarko, you know where to stick your reform,” and “No, no to your bogus reform, yes yes to revolution,” some said that the pension protest was an important moment of politicization for their generation.
Sophie Frebillot, 19, a philosophy student, said that student assemblies over the past few weeks were “increasingly being fed by an outcry that’s growing more and more generalized,” and then cited “tons of problems in society in general, and this movement against the pension reforms allows us to express that discontent, too.”
She said she would continue to protest, citing a previous government’s bow to student pressure in 2006 to abandon a law on youth unemployment. “That means that everything a government does, the street can undo,” she said.
François Hume-Ferkatadji, 21, a graduate student in urban policy, said that “people infantilize us, but we’re also old enough to have a political consciousness.” He said that pension reform was “necessary, for we must conserve the welfare state,” but that the current effort contained inequalities concerning women, young people and those in strenuous or dangerous occupations.
“In France, we talk a lot about national identity,” he said. “Well, this is the French national identity: it’s the struggle, it’s resistance, and right now it’s not a big joke for young people.”
Others said that the government should further tax the wealthy instead and warned, like Grégory Tobeilem, 33, a professor of history and a member of the C.G.T. union, that Mr. Sarkozy had “already planned further attacks on the system, like for social security.” A goal of many protestors, he said, is “to show that we’re fed up with the fact that they want us to pay for the crisis of their system.”
Union officials say they are angry with the government for stopping a process of negotiation over the pension reform, especially after a scandal-filled summer that nearly cost the man in charge of the bill his job. That is the labor minister, Eric Woerth. He was caught up in a battle within the wealthy Bettencourt family, which owns L’Oréal, when secret tapes seemed to indicate illegal campaign financing to Mr. Sarkozy’s party and its then treasurer, Mr. Woerth.
François Chérèque, secretary general of the country’s second-largest union, C.F.D.T., said Monday night on television that he was open to talks on better job opportunities for young people and senior citizens, a stance echoed by Laurence Parisot, the head of the main employers organization, Medef.
But on Tuesday, Mr. Chérèque sounded more bitter about relations with Mr. Sarkozy and his aides, who had begun their term trying to reach out to the unions. “There’s nothing left,” Mr. Chérèque told Le Monde. “The harm done is deep, deep.”
On his relations with the Elysée, he said: “If they think it will be enough to change some ministers and to call us, with a contrived smile on their faces, to talk about social issues, they’re mistaken.”
He said that “we are in a new phase, but a new phase does not mean everything is over,” expressing the hope the Mr. Sarkozy would yet withdraw the law “because a law can always be perfected.”
Mr. Sarkozy’s aides have already said that they would make a gesture to the opposition and rethink a limit on taxes for the wealthy of 50 percent of yearly income, which Mr. Sarkozy instituted to encourage the wealthy to stay in France, but which has been called unjust. The aides have suggested replacing it and the wealth tax with a new band of taxation for the richest in France.
Prime Minister François Fillon, who may not keep his job past November, was conciliatory, promising a new round of dialogue with the unions on how to increase jobs for young people and older ones.
“We are beginning to exit the social crisis but the situation remains difficult,” Mr. Fillon told party legislators. “Political firmness without social dialogue is a fault, but social dialogue without political firmness is a grave error,” he said.
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