October 20, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French.
On October 17, Standard & Poor’s downgraded France’s credit rating due to “high uncertainty” surrounding its public finances. The financial world is reminding [President] Macron and [Prime Minister] Lecornu that it’s their duty to crack down even harder on workers.
Cuts and dirty tricks
Those instructions didn’t fall on deaf ears! In education, the government is preparing to cut 4,000 jobs and slow down the recruitment of support staff for students with disabilities. The hospital budget is limited to an increase of 1.6%, while demographic needs alone would require at least an increase of 5%.
Civil service salaries will not increase anytime soon, nor will low-income family benefits, student grants, or retirement pensions. The latter, starting in 2027, will be under-indexed by 0.4% with regards to inflation. Apprentices will even see their net salaries decrease!
Non-EU (European Union) foreign students without scholarships will lose their housing assistance, and foreigners will have to pay more for permit applications to become French residents.
Even meal vouchers and vacation vouchers will be taxed at 8%!
The Social Security finance bill foresees more than $8.1 billion in cuts on healthcare. These cuts will entail a doubling of medical deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for medication, medical transportation, doctor’s visits, and now medical devices such as prosthetics. People with long-term conditions – such as effects from strokes or multiple sclerosis – will lose their tax exemption on benefits.
All these attacks will add even more hardship to our lives.
A crude attempt to scam pensioners
Yet some dare to claim that this budget is a step forward because it includes the suspension of the 2023 pension reform. In fact, it is simply a decelerated version of the transition from the legal retirement age of 62 to 64, as the number of quarters required to obtain a full pension continues to increase, the increase is just done less abruptly. What’s more, for this supposed concession to be adopted, the rest of the Lecornu budget would have to be voted on!
This was enough for the (reformist) Socialist Party deputies to abandon their motion to censure the government. Their partners in the New Popular Front are crying betrayal… but you can only be betrayed by those you trust! One could claim the real betrayal was helping rehabilitate the weakened Socialist Party in the 2022 and 2024 legislative elections.
However, it is no coincidence that Lecornu keeps pushing for attacks and cuts concerning pensions: it is over pension reforms that the most important fights have taken place in recent years, proof that our struggles always leave an imprint.
Let’s get ready to fight back
It’s up to us to defeat this pathetic attempt at diversion. We must go on strike, all together, to demand that no salary or benefits be less than $2,300, that there be massive hiring in the public services, that layoffs be banned…
While union leaders do not seem to be in a hurry to prepare a counterattack, the CFDT [union federation] even welcoming Lecornu’s trickery, some are not waiting to defend their working conditions, wages, or rights, such as the postal workers in the 17th arrondissement (district) of Paris, railway workers at Saint-Lazare station, logistics and transport workers at Geodis, Auchan employees, and students fighting for the right to attend higher education at the University of Nanterre.
Governments change, politicians come and go, but policies remain and will remain as long as bosses, shareholders, and bankers, who do not depend on elections, retain their power. We must come together to overthrow them. We are the ones who work, so we should be the ones deciding!
