Longest ever school strike
* France Robert Noirel reports on the twomonth long school strike movement in the underpriviliged département of Seine St-Denis. Seine St-Denis is one of the most denselypopulated regions of France. Part of the Paris region, the Seine St-Denis département (administrative area rates particularly high in all the indices of social exclusion, unemployment, immigrants particularly illegal ones, low number of young people leaving school with a quali-
It is a traditional bastion of the French Communist Party, and part of the "red ring" of suburbs around Paris). Nowadays, it also has a high National Front vote.
A two-month-long strike movement is unusual in the national school system, where unlimited strikes (revoted everyday by the strikers) are rare except in exceptional circumstance such as May 1968 or December 1995. Two months of struggle
On 12th March, a dozen colleges (schools for 11 to 15 year olds between primary school and lycée) went on strike in support of demands for more teachers in order to be able to cope with the difficult situation they taced, particularly in terms of violence coming from socially extremely under-privileged youth.
Since 3rd February representatives from different schools had been meeting regularly to prepare collective action, on the initiative of the Louise Michel College in Clichy-sous-Bois which was already on strike. Among them were a good number of activists from the Ecole Emancipée a current mainly based in the main teachers union federation (FSU). Their position is characterised by a defence of unity in struggle and support for the personnel in the most precarious situations. Members of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) are active in this current.
The strike spread rapidly to the whole département. During the biggest demonstrations two thirds of the primary and secondary schools in the Seine St Denis were affected by the strike movement. One third of them were on strike for several weeks. The pupils and parents participated in the movement (the latter occupied a certain number of the colleges and primary schools). This made it possible to have very big demonstrations of over 10,000 people and significant slogans such as "we want more funding, we are not less than nothings" , revealing the feeling common to parents, pupils and teachers that the Seine-St-Denis were 4 International Viewpoint #303
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treated with contempt by the Minister of Education who for weeks refused to even meet a delegation. Thirteen demonstrations were organised in all, most of them ending up in front of the (closed) doors of the Ministry of Education.
This collective presence of the teachers, pupils and their parents shows that the Seine St-Denis strike was a real social movement, revealing the crisis in the département. The movement put forward the development of public services, particularly in education, as the solution to this crisis. But many others are in the same situation, notably the health service. There were in fact links made between the teachers' strike and that in one of the main hospitals of the département.
The two months were also marked by a number of spectacular actions which pushed the media to maintain coverage of the struggle. On 26th April, the day after a mass demonstration following which the minister again refused to receive a delegation, and where the police felt authorised to charge and arrest demonstrators, 250 teachers from Seine-St-Denis interrupted a live broadcast in which the minister was to participate. This had a big media impact. For several days the strikers followed Claude Allegre, the education minister wherever he went. On 28th April another demonstration ended with a symbolic occupation of the Sorbonne, thirty years after May 1968. There were many other symbolic actions, for example making a human chain around the brand new football stadium in St Denis whose cost would have paid for many of the public services lacking in the département. The press often underlined the inventive nature of the movement.
The length of this struggle, the diversity of actions organised show a determination that could not be deflected. How can this be explained? The roots of the revolt go deep
For several years the embers have been smouldering under a social and thus educational situation which has been getting worse and worse. With fewer teachers per pupil than the national average, teachers, particularly in the colleges, can no longer cope with the crisis situation in the schools of Seine StDenis. This is the level at which the crisis is most clearly revealed. All children go to college, as schooling is obligatory until sixteen, but a large number, particularly in areas of social deprivation, fall into a spiral of academic failure. As they cannot succeed in classes too big for their needs to be really taken into account, they slide into violent attitudes and acts, towards fellow pupils and teachers.
Isolated struggles on similar questions (often sparked off by violent incidents) take place regularly. Last year a broader movement began to develop through support for the Galois College in Sevran whose teachers, after one month on strike, were beaten by truncheon wielding police in going to present their demands to the local education authority. These events demonstrate the similarity and difficulty of situations which is not found anywhere else at the level of a département.
Over and above the legitimate refusal to teach in the conditions which exist in many of the colleges of Seine St-Denis, the shared concern of majority of teachers . is the desire to defend and promote the public education service as a bulwark against the social crisis and the political crisis revealed by the increase in support for the National Front. Thus the demands formulated by the teachers: • twenty pupils per class and the creation of the posts necessary; • rejection of job precarity; • the designation as "Education Priority
Zones" of all the schools that ask for it.
This designation brings a bonus for the teachers but most importantly extra teachers enabling class sizes to be reduced. Not a miracle solution. And in any case few colleges have obtained the label despite the obvious difficulties Self-organisation...
This was one of the essential characteristics of this struggle. A General
Assembly (AG) of schools brought together all the colleges and lycées involved in the action. It took its decisions on the basis of the vote of delegates mandated by their school general assemblies and met on average twice a week. This AG drew up the platform of the movement which was presented to the minister. A smaller "organising collective" prepared the AGs and ensured that actions were organised.
It was with this type of organisation that eventual divisions between the different unions were overcome and guaranteed to the non-unionised their ability to act and take decisions. All the trade unions were present at the meetings and accepted the decisions of the AG. This link between the self-organisation of those in struggle and the unions strengthened the movement and obviously had its consequences within the unions themselves. The AG was thus able to take decision which corresponded to the wishes of the greatest number of those involved at every stage of the
In France there is a relatively high level of unionisation in the national education system (30% as opposed to 10% in the country as a whole). The main federation is the Unitary Union Federation (FSU) in which the members of the LCR are active. It is a federation of unions organising different categories of personnel, of which the main one is the SNES for teachers in colleges and lycées. The SNES accepted the decisions of the AG, which is a new departure for this union which traditionally distrusts different forms of self-organisation and coordination. This position played a crucial role in the development of the movement given the weight of the SNES, supported by two-thirds of teachers in Seine St-Denis in the elections of workplace representatives (in which all teachers, not only unionised
On the other hand the SNUIPP (FSU union for primary and nursery school teachers) put a brake on any possible extension of the movement to its sector. This was owing to a lesser mobilisation at the base of course, but also because in Seine St-Denis many of its organisers who are still Communist Party members did not want to embarrass the "plural left" (Socialist Party, Communist Party and Greens) in government.
The other unions, which are clearly a minority, respected the rules of the self-organisation "game". These were the SGEN-CFDT, the CGT (influential in the vocational lycées in which the LCR is also present), SUD Education created two years ago and the small anarchosyndicalist CNT.
Only one union, Force Ouvrière, refused to accept the decisions of the AG. This union's teachers' sectors is led by the [Trotskyist] Lambertist current, which once again demonstrated its sectarianism and inability to understand a mass
Women in struggle
Women constitute 60% of the employees of the national education system in the secondary schools of the Seine StDenis. In this struggle they were very much present in the demonstrations, the general meetings in the schools and the AG. In this latter their interventions were in general marked by a concern in taking forward the movement rather than being applauded, as was the case of a number of the male "leaders". However, at the level of the "organising collective" there was a rather smaller proportion of women, as was also the case in the elected delegations which represented the personnel in struggle in the negotiations with the authorities. We found the traditional division of labour and role of men whose social life leaves them time to take on this type of role usually the "organising collective" members were in meetings at least four nights a week).
But it was above all in the union leaderships that women were under-represented. Almost all the union spokespersons were men. Women were thus present in the struggle but obstacles remain and must be discussed in order to be overA strike at the heart of the political dis-
It is restating the obvious to say that the problems of schools are highly political, notably in a département where they are closely linked to the crisis which is tearing apart its social fabric. The movement showed this by raising the essential political problems of
Putting forward the defence of the public education service while there is a big rise in support for the National Front in Seine St-Denis is to be part of the struggle against this mortal danger. The teachers in struggle understood this very well on 28th March when they decided to form a contingent in the anti-NF demonstration following the regional elections.
Faced with a speech by Allegre accusing them of playing the game of the far-right, they showed that to be at the heart of the social struggle can bring you to the forefront of the struggle against fascism. They were part of the united-front demonstration (after discussion) while at the same time demonstrating against the left parties forming the government against which their action was directed. However the contingent of the Socialist Party had to fold up its banners as at the end of the demonstration, when it encountered the teachers calling for the resignation of minister of education Allegre.
The teachers' strike in Seine St-Denis acted as a litmus test for the governing Socialist and Communist parties. Within the Socialist Party we had to wait for a month and a half before any voices less hostile that that of the minister of were raised. The way in which he responded to the movement was as dishonouring to the governmental left as is the response of interior minister Chevenement on the question of illegal immigrants. We heard everything: contempt for the personnel, accusations of playing the game of the National Front, lies, refusal to assume his responsibilities (instead blaming subordinates for "misinforming" the minister). From this point of view the popular slogan "Allegre resign" was perfectly justified. In letting him follow such a retrograde policy the SP can only cut itself off more and more from those who made possible its success in the last general election of June 1997.
But the Communist Party and line of Robert Hue were not spared either by the struggle. Seine St-Denis continues to be the party's electoral bastion as it holds the presidency of the Conseil General (elected government of a département which manages its budget) and the majority in many local councils. The CP was thus directly put to the test by the strike.
However, up until the end of March it supported the "catching up plan" proposed by Allegre but judged as completely insufficient by the teachers and indeed the spark to their strike. The Communist Party considered that this plan would "contribute to increasing academic success" in the words of a leaflet distributed on 21st
There were of course disagreeing voices such as Mr. Braouezec, a "renewal" communist and mayor of the town of St Denis. But overall the Communist Party preferred governmental solidarity to the mass movement. There is no doubt that many Communist teachers active in the movement did not identify with their party on this point. A first victory for the social movement
On 30th April, after six weeks refusal, Claude Allegre met the unions and the representatives of the AG. This was already a victory for the powerful movement of teachers, parents and pupils which had developed in Seine St-Denis.
The 3,000 new teaching posts (one hundred times more than in the first "catching up plan") which he conceded was first of all the confirmation by the minister himself of the immensity of the needs in the département. Of course, in September this year there will only be 800 (1,000 in 1999 and 1,200 in 2000).
Above all it is not clear how they will be attributed. The minister and the local education authority want to do so on the basis of the "projects" of different schools which could divide teachers by putting schools in competition with one another.
There is therefore the risk that the minister will in fact turn the situation to his advantage by using Seine St-Denis as a deregulation laboratory. This is why the movement has to continue as it has done since the end of the strike movement by continuing to hold regular AGs.
The balance sheet of the struggle even if we only take into account the 800 new posts for this September and with all the problems just mentioned, is rather impres-
lesbian/gay/bisexual communities are not wait! *
* France sive. Particularly in a period of freeze on employment in the public sector. But of course the dramatic situation in many colleges will not be improved at the start of the new school year with the three or four additional teachers in each school. Justified frustrations
Among some teachers there is a strong feeling of disappointment. In September this could materialise as a renewed desire to struggle, demanding that the ministerial decision are really put into practice and that an unlimited strike, self-organised by those who struggle, in coordination with the unions has proved itself an effective weapon.
This is what forced Allegre to retreat because it faced the government (with a serious political problem and forced it to take its responsibilities.
In this sense the struggle which has just taken place and only encourage further action in the national education system and in French society in general.
The teachers of Seine St-Denis have shown that they can force this govern-
Like the unemployed and the immigrants "sans papiers" ', they have shown the way to a generalised movement which must force this government to change its policy. To satisfy the demand of those "from below". And not to return to the politics which the majority of wage-workers already showed that they rejected in November-December 1995. * * The author is a teacher in Seine St Denis and member of the LCR. The teachers in the LCR would like to have discussions with teachers from other countries to exchange experiences. Write to LCR-Enseignement, 2 new gains made.