May 5, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French.
May 1, International Workers’ Day, was an opportunity to make the voice of the working class heard, in the face of the prevailing reactionary and militaristic rhetoric, in France as much as in the rest of the world. In the United States, the birthplace of May Day, protests took place against Trump and his policies; in Türkiye, against Erdoğan’s regime, despite brutal police repression and the arrest of 400 people.
Strikes continue, despite the bosses and the government
Struggles are taking place [in France] at the local level, in both private companies and public services, around wages, job security and working conditions. This week in France, railway workers are on strike, triggering outrage from ministers and journalists who denounce their so-called “privileges.” Truth be told, those denouncing know a thing or two about unfair advantages and social parasitism themselves! The SNCF [railroad] made a net profit of €1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) in 2024, while rail workers only received a 0.5% pay rise…
Nationalizing layoffs…
The list of layoff plans keeps growing. Last week, STMicroelectronics ($1.6 billion in profits) and ArcelorMittal ($1.3 billion) joined in, announcing 1,000 and 636 job cuts in France respectively – including over 300 in Dunkirk for ArcelorMittal alone.
Left-wing (reformist) political and union leaders flocked to Dunkirk on May 1, with a magic solution to save ArcelorMittal: nationalization. The song is well known. In the 1970s, the right-wing government, under President Giscard d’Estaing, cleared the debts of Usinor and Sacilor by buying up majority shares. Later, the [reformist] Left, united behind Mitterrand, completed the nationalization, and in the end, the state itself carried out the “restructuring.” The result was 100,000 jobs lost over a decade, while the wealthy de Wendel family – historic owners of the forges – walked away with a generous compensation far exceeding the value of their outdated plants.
Of course, political leaders on the left, Ruffin, Trouvé (France Insoumise), Tondelier (Green Party), Faure (Socialist Party) now swear that nationalization of the steel industry will save jobs. But what they really want is for the state to finance restructuring and redundancies, so that later, bosses can return to a now-profitable industry, so-called “French” steel that, incidentally, is made by workers using iron ore from around the world. After all, the arms industry needs raw material to make killing machines!
We’d rather fight together to ban layoffs!
Nationalism – even on the left – and protectionism – even “solidarity” protectionism – are not solutions because they rely on a state that serves the wealthy, regardless of whether it’s led by left-wing or right-wing politicians.
What we need instead is a united struggle of all workers. At the SNCF, the union leaders of Sud and CGT have chosen to divide up the fight: one day for drivers, another for inspectors, yet another for the maintenance workers. In factories facing layoffs, union leaders often limit the struggle to endless negotiations in which the workers and bosses stare at each other in the mirror. Is dividing our forces instead of joining them in a common fight really a winning strategy? Quite the opposite. We need to find the path to unity in struggle. After all, every major victory has come from strikes that gained momentum and posed a collective threat to the bosses.
