Why Does It Seem Like French Workers Are Much Better at Protesting Than American Workers?

For the past month, France has literally and figuratively been on fire. Videos of massive union protests have circulated on Twitter. Most days, large fires are burning as garbage piles up in the streets of Paris. There are even reports of police chasing and violently beating civilians with batons. And it’s all because…the French don’t want to work an extra two years? 

Meanwhile, in the United States: Amazon, one of the largest employers in the country, has been cited numerous times by labor officials for blatant union-busting and endangering its workers. Despite massive railroad safety failures, rail workers are being ground to a pulp by their employers—and were forced by Congress to accept a union contract, which defeats the whole point of bargaining a union contract. And to top it all off, the Federal Reserve says the only way to fix rampant inflation is to pay workers less, even though companies are making record profits. 

Despite all this, the U.S. is decidedly not on fire. Even in the face of egregious labor rights violations and anti-worker legislative efforts, our union strikes are not nearly as destructive as those of the French. What gives?

The reason for this, according to both U.S. and French labor experts, is that the French have way more labor rights than we do. 

“It’s France, and in France, we protest a lot,” said Branislav Rugani, the confederal secretary of French union Force Ouvrière (Labor Force, or FO), who is responsible for the union’s international relations. He referenced a strike by oil workers last fall protesting unfair wages, which shut down the whole of France for three weeks due to a fuel shortage. Garbage workers, he said, strike frequently to protest their “absolutely deplorable conditions.”

“Since this is the only weapon we have at our disposal to advance in negotiations, we’ll use it regularly,” he said. 

Not only is it much easier to join a union in France, but unions have far more political and economic power, and they have much more social prominence. France also has more sectoral bargaining, which means that even if somebody isn't part of the union, the union can bargain for better conditions in their industry as a whole. Everybody in France benefits from unions. So when all eight French union federations call a strike? Everybody shows up.  

Motherboard spoke to two U.S. labor experts and two union officials from France about why French strikes are so different from U.S. strikes. Quotes from the union officials are translated from their original French. 

“Labor law in the U.S. is exceptionally unfavorable in the global north,” said Eric Blanc, an author and assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “The U.S. has the most anti-democratic labor laws of any industrialized country. What that means is that labor union density, the percentage of workers that are in unions, is very low. It's so hard to organize unions in the first place in the U.S., and that gives unions less weight than they do in France.”

Although labor rights movements in the U.S. have seen a resurgence over the past few years, union density currently sits at around 10 percent, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics said was the “lowest on record.” 

In order to form a union in the U.S., workers must gather a majority, get at least 30 percent of the company’s employees to sign union cards, and then get at least 50 percent of the vote in the union election that follows. At any point during this, the company could voluntarily recognize the union—but most companies don’t opt for that, and instead either remain silent on the issue, or actively try to discourage workers from unionizing. The latter option can be illegal, but companies still do it. 

In France, however, it’s much easier to join a union. 

“I know it’s very complicated to create a new union in the U.S. because you need to have a majority of over 50 percent of workers for this to be authorized,” Rugani said. “But it’s not at all like that in France. In France, you can have two people who decide to join a union. They get a union card, they go to the union leader and put down their documents, and the union is created. And it’s over.” 

After World War II, the French won a system of bargaining that covers around 90 percent of the country’s workforce regardless of union membership. A labor expert with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) explained that this is called sectoral bargaining. The eight massive French union federations are each composed of departmental unions that bargain for legal improvements in their industry. 

If you’re an oil worker, let’s say, then there’s a departmental union that bargains specifically for improvements to oil worker conditions—whether or not you’re a union member on paper, those improvements affect you. So, even though French union density also ranks at around 10 percent, unions “have a social weight that unions in the U.S. don't have,” Blanc said.

Another major factor of why France has such incredible union power is political history. The SEIU labor expert said that the U.S. labor movement had some of its strongest and most militant strikes—i.e., more resembling the French—in the 1930s through 50s. 

“The labor movement in the U.S. sort of was kneecapped by McCarthyism in the 1950s,” Blanc explained. “And many of the most dynamic organizers in the U.S. labor movement were leftists, communists, socialists. McCarthyism purged them from the labor movement. This is a huge difference from France, in which the labor movement to this day remains, as it's been for the last few years, overwhelmingly led by leftists who are interested in doing things like strikes and fighting the government—as opposed to the U.S., where the orientation still is much more moderate, focused on trying to work with management instead of organizing against them.” 

That isn’t to say that the U.S. hasn’t seen massive protests, both peaceful and militant, in the recent past. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, one of the many killings of Black Americans that gained nationwide attention, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the U.S. against the systemic racism and rampant police brutality in our country. Many of these protests, which began peacefully, quickly became militant after police used extreme methods to try and control the crowds—methods like beating people with batons, rubber bullets, and tear gas. 

But in the U.S., massive protests like these tend to be about social justice issues. Race in the U.S. absolutely overlaps with class—in 2021, Black people made up 13.6 percent of the population, and 19.5 percent of people in poverty. But the protests aren’t usually organized by labor unions, and they aren’t explicitly about labor issues. We have many more activists and organizations fighting for racial justice than we do for economic issues. In France, labor unions are immensely socially important, and so these massive labor strikes are what protests on social issues look like. 

Corporate strikes in France tend to resemble union strikes in the U.S. Just last month, around 65,000 school workers in California went on strike protesting their unfair wages and working conditions—within three days, a tentative agreement was reached. The scale of the California strike significantly overshot other recent union protests in the U.S. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who are set to begin bargaining a contract with UPS later this month, are prepared for a potential strike this summer that could rival the famed UPS strike of 1997, which encompassed around 185,000 workers. 

But protests like the ones happening currently in France don’t just fall under the union umbrella. “Usually, you don’t see something like this,” Rugani said. “This, for pensions—it’s national.” 

The reason the French are so upset is because in January, President Emmanuel Macron said that he would be proposing legislation to the French Parliament to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64. That means that every French laborer would have an additional two years of taxing physical work, as well as an additional two years of losing a significant chunk of money from their paycheck to pay for the pensions of the current pensioners—which Macron says he needs, because the government’s pension fund is about to run out of money. 

Reforming France’s complex and expensive pension system is something that Macron has been talking about for years, and each time he has been met with uproar. Rugani said that 93 percent of French laborers, and 70 percent of the population as a whole, are against pension reform. The eight French union federations—who, the SEIU labor expert said, almost never agree with each other to begin with—are entirely united on this front.

“This is a subject that’s very sensitive in France because our social protection was organized historically after the end of World War II, for national and inter-generational solidarity,” said Lydie Nicol, the national secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT). “The subject of pensions touches everybody, regardless of your status, if you work in a small or a big company, if you work in a [public] administration or a private enterprise—everybody is concerned.” 

The retirement system and national healthcare were introduced by the National Resistance Council after the end of the war to help France heal and band together. The way it works is that current workers give up a portion of their paycheck to the pension fund, from which retirees can draw their income. This is supposed to create some sense of solidarity—fraternity, if you will—and it has been successful. Now, as France’s population ages, Macron says the pension fund is being depleted more rapidly than it can be filled. 

Because he did not have enough votes in Parliament to pass his reform, Macron used a loophole in the French Constitution known as Article 49.3, which states that he can impose an executive order if the bill survives a no-confidence vote. Macron did this on March 20. 

“The French are angry because the government is weakening our democracy, and using methods that undermine our democracy,” Nicol said. “The government is using antidemocratic methods. So this is why we have protests that have never been as important in the last 40 years as they are now.” 

In a televised interview, Macron said that the unions had not used their ability to bargain with the government. “I’m sorry to say that not a single union proposed a compromise,” he said. “Historically, unions could propose compromises—‘Not 65 years, we could do 63 years, we could increase the duration.’ They told us, ‘No reform.’”

“The anti-democratic nature of Macron's government is, at this point, sort of comically clear,” Blanc said. “This overwhelming percentage of the population has said it’s against the reforms. And he didn’t get enough votes in Parliament to pass it, and he had imposed it through an executive order. This clearly raises the question of, who is he doing this on behalf of? The answer is essentially big capital, which has an interest in trying to downsize government and force workers to work longer.”

“It advances inequality,” Nicol said, referring to Macron’s new proposed pension system.

That same sentiment is part of what’s driving the resurgence in support for unions in the U.S. “The reason is the same in the U.S. and France, which is just the unparalleled economic inequality. You have a relative handful of billionaires controlling so much of that wealth, but then also controlling so much of the political process,” Blanc explained. “Unions are being seen correctly by many more people as their main recourse to correct that power imbalance.”

“French workers have inspired the world through their bold, relentless action to defend their rights,” said Mary Kay Henry, the international president of SEIU. “Their energy is infectious, and their demands for respect and a good life echo across the globe.”

“What these workers all have in common is a vision for building the future we all want that is grounded in racial and economic justice,” she continued. “But the rules of the American economy are rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthiest among us. It’s far too hard for workers to win a voice on the job through a union, and when they do, corporations spend millions busting workers’ unions and fighting worker-led policies.” 

Amazon recently disclosed that it spent $14.2 million on union-busting consultants in 2022 alone. Its consultants have been shown to be paid as much as $3,200 a day. 

“I think you need to have union leaders who are willing to rely on the strike and who are willing to really fight,” Blanc said. “And that's the exception rather than the norm in the U.S. One of the things that would make a general strike possible in the United States is that, union members have recently begun transforming some of the most important unions in the U.S. They elected a more militant leadership just recently to the Teamsters Union, and to the United Auto Workers just last week.” 

“Transforming unions into being more willing to take on the employers—that’s the basis now for moving in the direction,” he continued. “But that will take a lot more preliminary fights and organizing before we’re ready for it on a national level.” 

One such preliminary fight was recently won in California, when a new bill was passed allowing an elected council of fast food workers across multiple chains to bargain with employers collectively—this is, by definition, sectoral bargaining. The council would be responsible for “establish sectorwide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other working conditions.” The SEIU labor expert said that though this is a significant win, there’s still a long way to go in the U.S. before we have any kind of sectoral power, and that we must rewrite the rules from the ground up for our unions to be as effective as possible. 

“At CFDT, what we say is, the more numerous we are, the better we can understand the reality of these workers. And if we know their reality, it’s easier to defend them,” Nicol said, “If we have anything to impart, it’s that you should both mobilize in the streets, but also mobilize and work with them in the companies and administrations where they are. You must do both.”