February 17, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French
In the United States, the federal agency dedicated to international aid (USAID) was dismantled in a matter of weeks without its employees even being able to retrieve their personal belongings. This affected 2,200 federal employees. Last week, 200,000 federal employees still in their probationary period were laid off. Today, the likes of Trump and Musk are attacking migrants and civil servants. And tomorrow, it’ll be all the workers, whom they are attacking bit by bit.
The carnage is happening on the European side of the Atlantic, too!
Certainly: it’s happening in the United States, and Trump and Musk are thugs. But is what the French state and bosses are doing so different?
On Friday, we learned that the staff of three prestigious music magazines had been laid off by their new owner, the CEO of the Albin Michel group, one of the largest French publishing houses: profitable, but not profitable enough! The same thing happened in the video game industry, which laid off 14,000 people worldwide in 2024, including several hundred in France.
In Cholet and Vannes (two cities in north-western France), Michelin (a France-based tire manufacturer) has decided to close two factories, laying off 1,254 workers. The same goes for the employees of the Auchan group (a multinational retail group), which has announced the dismissal of 2,389 employees. And that’s not counting the smaller companies that are closing their doors, subcontractors of clients who are no longer able to give them work. According to the CGT, a major trade union in France, since September 2023, there have been 286 layoff plans affecting nearly 300,000 workers.
Meanwhile, the government is preoccupied with its racist propaganda about insecurity and petty crime (which it’s blowing out of proportion) and against migrants. It’s been radio silence on the layoffs. The only time the government is concerned about employment, it’s to tighten the conditions to get unemployment benefits!
Their billions in profits and the threat of unemployment for all workers
Michelin made 1.9 billion euros (almost $2 billion) in profit in 2024. Auchan belongs to the Mulliez family, the fifth richest in France, and in recent years has received more than 500 million euros ($524 million) in public aid of all kinds. In 2024, CAC 40 (French stock market index) companies distributed 98 billion euros ($103 billion) in dividends to their shareholders. The big contracting companies, the ones behind the wave of layoffs, are doing well. So why are we seeing these layoffs? Of course, to make more profits by demanding the same work from fewer employees, but not only that.
In the United States, Russell Vought, Trump’s current director of the Office of Management and Budget, said two years ago, speaking of civil servants: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” adding that he wanted them to go to work feeling sick to their stomachs. And that is precisely the result that employers, both in the U.S. and in France, would like to achieve: to make all jobs precarious, to make all workers – even those who believe themselves to be protected by their status or the nature of their work – feel threatened and accept anything without complaint.
Organizing for a counter-offensive of all workers
The union leaders denounce the layoffs. However, they leave the laid-off workers to fight company by company. Many do so with determination but alone, one after the other, without real coordination, and with no other perspective than to try to negotiate as much compensation as possible. Even for that goal, something completely different would be necessary! To fight against layoffs, to make them impossible, a general mobilization is needed, because yes, all workers are threatened.
In the absence of will on the part of the union leadership, it is from the bottom-up that links must be created and common objectives set. To gradually broaden the mobilization from one factory to the region, from the region to the country, to make it a political event. And to make it the bosses and the wealthy who feel sick to their stomachs!
