France has been living to the rhythm of strikes for ten days. The media talks about nothing else. Well, almost all the media. But what are they saying? What do we hear? The road traffic. Special correspondents from all over Paris or France explain that they see hundreds of kilometers of traffic jams on their road traffic computer screens. Metaphors follow metaphors: “luminous serpents,” “vehicle farandoles,” “colorful wall of cars”… A list of trains on time, delayed, expected to be delayed, or even expected to be early, is declaimed. They question the French. What do they think of the strike? Do they understand the movement? Why? Are they unionized? etc… These questions are asked very little. What matters is being inside their ordeal, knowing their frustration or their ingenuity in bypassing the obstacles. As if everything on the periphery of the strike were much more important topics: Wednesday’s sabotage, Tuesday’s jeers at François Chérèque.
Third social round.
Observers scrutinize the government’s sleight of hand. After six months of calm crossings with discreet grumbles about the summer laws or the start of the school year, turbulence around Rachida Dati and DNA tests, Nicolas Sarkozy and his team are confronted with their first large-scale strikes, first on special retirement schemes, then on purchasing power, employment, and civil servants’ salaries. The President of the Republic (in)voluntarily leaves François Fillon, Xavier Bertrand, Eric Woerth, and André Santini on the front line. The presidential discretion intrigues journalists used to a certain omnipresence. At each interview with a government figure, always the same question, like a ritual: “When will Nicolas Sarkozy intervene?” Norman answer: “When he deems it necessary.” A game? It looks like it. The media accused him of repeated interventions. Nicolas Sarkozy remains silent.
He remains silent and is called upon to speak. A playground game of hide-and-seek. A game of deception where the losers will never be those playing but the spectators who are not allowed onto the field. The opposition struggles to find the right words to capture attention. Manuel Valls tries. While accusing “the President of the Republic and the government of allowing the situation to rot and of seeking a form of political victory over the unions to disguise what is the failure of his economic policy,” he stigmatized his party’s errors: “We should have said more clearly that we are in favor of harmonizing retirement schemes and therefore aligning special schemes with the general public sector scheme […] we should have been clearer, more courageous in 2003 during the Fillon reform. We should have supported the initiatives of the CFDT and François Chérèque.” These are words that draw microphones. François Hollande also made an attempt on Tuesday: “Nicolas Sarkozy wanted to be the president of purchasing power: he is the President for six months now, but the purchasing power is still not there.” The union leaders, for their part, seem to follow the base of the movement. With an opposition searching for itself and disorganized unions, talking about a third social round is difficult. The media, having no other interlocutors than the government, have diverted reports on the strikes towards peripheral subjects. They often (in)voluntarily contributed to making the movement unpopular. The time for negotiations has come. Will the right questions be asked? Will they lead all stakeholders and listeners to think about the solutions to be provided for the various demands on special schemes, purchasing power, and civil servants’ salaries? To see, to listen, to reflect…
