French police arrest 95 in labour law reform protests

It took a record number of policemen on the shortest ever protest route to ensure that the tenth “day of action” against the new French labour law occurred without violence on Thursday.

Ninety-five people were arrested as they tried to reach the Place de la Bastille, because they carried objects that could be thrown at police. Another 100 alleged trouble-makers were blacklisted. Confiscated goggles and diving masks, scarves and motorcycle helmets – the paraphernalia of rioters known as casseurs – piled up at police checkpoints.

Glass bus shelters were dismantled before the march, so they could not be vandalised. Every shop and cafe on the trajectory pulled down metal curtains, as if expecting an invasion of barbarians.

Yet the march was festive, with vendors roasting kebabs and merguez sausage. A sea of red flags and balloons and a Che Guevara banner flew over the symbolic Place de la Bastille, where the French revolution started. A woman sold Le Bolshevik newspaper.

“Strike. Strike. Resistance. Against the labour law. Against the state of emergency,” demonstrators chanted.

Thursday's march almost didn't happen. After 28 police were injured in the previous protest, on June 14th, prime minister Manuel Valls tried to ban it, but President François Hollande caved in to an outcry over the denial of the constitutional right to demonstrate.

Right to protest

“I came to defend our right to demonstrate,” says Nathalie (59) a journalist.  “They authorise the fête de la musique and the football ‘fanzones’, but our right to protest is questioned.  I don’t like this government’s authoritarian streak, the fact they passed the labour law by decree.”

Union leaders agreed with the interior minister to a 1.6km march from the Place de la Bastille and along the canal known as l’Arsenal.  Two thousand policemen in riot gear searched everyone who entered the protest zone and blocked all side streets. Police said 20,000 people demonstrated.  The organisers counted 60,000.

Samy (27) works for an association that helps migrants. Like other demonstrators, he accused the police of having provoked violence at previous marches.  “The labour law creates competition and social dumping between businesses,” he says.

Was competition necessarily a bad thing?  I asked.

“Co-operation is less hostile, more humane,” Samy replied. “The government peddles fantasies, for example that the police are nice and the demonstrators attack them, that workers and management can get along fine.”

Jean-Jacques Picot (54) a tall, thin sanitation lorry driver for the city of Paris, wore a fluorescent yellow vest with “Clean Paris” emblazoned on the back. “I’m here for my children.  The labour law will kill them,” was written on his placard.

Like other Paris sanitation workers, Picot was on strike for weeks. The CRS riot police drove them out of their garage in Ivry on Tuesday morning.

“It was violent,” he says. “They flushed us out with tear gas.”

What did Picot have against the labour law?  It does nothing to stop the CDD (short-term) contracts that comprise the vast majority of new jobs in France, he noted. "You can't get a bank loan or rent an apartment with a CDD."

Hours up, pay down

Picot also objected to the fact that companies will be able to conclude internal agreements to increase weekly working hours from 35 to 39 hours. And overtime will be paid only 10 per cent – rather than 25 per cent – extra.

“We’ll go to the very end on the labour law,” Hollande repeated on Thursday.

“Everybody hates the PS [Socialist Party]”, “Everybody hates the labour law”, and “Judas betrayed Jesus. Hollande betrayed his electorate”, were typical placards.

Protesters chanted about class struggle, but the real struggle is between the liberal, social democratic government and the old-style left. As a result, the left is virtually certain to lose presidential and legislative elections next year. “They’ve shot themselves in the foot,” Picot says.

While French trade unionists marched, citizens of the United Kingdom were voting on whether to stay in the EU.  It was "a great day," Picot says.

"This isn't the Europe we want. We want an intelligent Europe for the little people, not for the stock market."