In response to France's President,
Emmanuel Macron's proposal to raise the retirement age of workers in the country,
a labor union has decided we're gonna cut off the power from
the homes of politicians and instead give it to workers at a discount.
God, I love it so much.
Okay, so let's give you some context, let's talk about the protest and
then we'll talk about this tactic.
So France's population is aging and life expectancy is getting longer as well.
Now, Macron says that changing the minimum age of retirement to 64 from 62,
by the way it's 67 here in the United States,
is the only way to keep France's pension system solvent.
So it's a very similar argument that we see here in the United States when a very
easy fix is to just raise taxes on the rich, right?
In the context of the United States, income gets taxed for Social Security
up to a certain amount and then there's a cap and then you stop getting taxed,
but you have to be a high earner to ever experience that.
Argument is just get rid of that cap,
that would immediately solve any issues we might have with solvency.
And a similar argument is being made by workers in France.
They say that higher taxes on the wealthy or
more payroll contributions from employers could be solutions if there's
genuinely concern about the solvency of the pension programs.
Now, it's an incredibly unpopular proposal by Macron.
It's led to massive protests and a recent poll of 1,008 people by polling and
market research firm Ifop showed 68% of French people were
opposed to Macron's proposed pension overhaul.
Now, about two weeks ago, okay, at least one million people protest.
They took to the streets and
they protested in France over these proposed changes.
So they get active real quick.
I remember covering the yellow vest movement,
I just love seeing that form of solidarity and activism once a politician in France
proposes something that's unpopular or something that labor is not in favor of.
Now, let's circle back, actually before we circle back to what the union is doing and
how they're using power to essentially persuade these politicians to bend to
their will, I wanna hear what you say Cenk.
>> Yeah, so there's a lot of differences between France and
a lot of Europe in the US.
In Europe, the workers still fight back and it's a thing,
the solidarity among workers and- >> Because they're unionized.
>> Yeah, and when the government tries to take something away from you, everybody
gets animated, they do polling, and by the way, they also have media that's better.
So they actually accurately report that the significant majority of French
are against this idea, right?
So in our case, you do protests, the media will barely cover it,
unless there's a celebrity, right?
And they will largely blame the workers.
If a worker did any of the things that these guys did in this protest,
they'd be instantly fired and tarred and feathered by the press, okay?
And some of the things, look, the French system is so much better.
They have such a better social safety net, but they don't know it and it's good,
I don't want them to know it.
I want them to keep fighting, right?
But for us, when I see like, hey the retirement age might be moved from 60 to
64, I was like that would be a dream here if it was moved down to 64 here
in America because we're so oppressed and we don't even know it, right?
But to be fair again, you got to wait through mainstream media to get
the answers after reading several different articles on and
finally found out that actually the retirement age is 67 in France for
a lot of different categories.
So it's not as simple as, it's 62 all across France, it's not, and
that's why some of the people are pissed.
>> Yeah, and look, I'm guessing, I don't know for sure, but
it's probably different based on which industry you work
in because some jobs are more physically taxing than others, right?
So if you're a construction worker and you're doing like actual physical labor
day in and day out as part of your livelihood,
well it's gonna be taxing on your body and your retirement age should be sooner.
So I'm guessing that might be the reason.
The other thing is, remember they have unions, they have organized labor
essentially demanding and negotiating things on behalf of workers, right?
So in a lot of Scandinavian countries, they don't have like a federal minimum
wage because the trade unions negotiate those wages on behalf of the workers and
they don't have to rely on the federal government like we do,
which has been a failed system to say the least.
Okay, now let's get to what the union is doing here.
So the union in question is CGT.
They're considered to be the furthest left or farthest left union in France.
And here's what they did to essentially pressure these politicians to
avoid going along with what Macron is proposing here.
Members of the CGT union who work in the energy sector, and
that's really important here,
cut power to the office of a lawmaker from Macron's party for more than three hours.
On January 23, CGT energy workers in Marseille manipulated electricity and
gas meters to cut bills for bakers who were protesting in
the French ports city against high energy prices.
There are other examples as well, but what I just love about this is how when you
have labor power you can use tactics like this, right?
And the politicians are kind of being backed into a corner and they're like,
we live in a democracy here, we were elected and we get to do whatever we want.
And the workers are like, no you don't, sorry.
And they are threatening, the union leadership with potential criminal charges
for what they're doing, but you're right Cenk.
I mean compare this to the possibility of rail workers striking in America and
how our politicians did not hesitate in threatening them if they did go on strike.
>> Okay, so look, first of all,
I don't even necessarily agree with the action to be honest with you.
They're doing something that they're not supposed to do at work.
They're taking matters into their own hands, okay?
But it shows you the relative power of workers in France versus
America to give you a sense of how battered our workers are.
I don't think anybody would even dream of that here in America.
And if they did, if the energy workers at a utility company or anywhere
else cut power to a wealthy district in America, they would be instantly fired.
There wouldn't be any deliberations, there wouldn't be nothing.
They'd be fired on the spot, every single one of them.
Their neighbors would be fired and they might literally get arrested.
You endangered the lives of these people.
It was 53 degrees, they could have frozen to death.
Okay, it doesn't matter, they would invent some excuse and
the chance of those people being arrested would be sky high, okay?
What the French workers did there is in unthinkable America.
To give you a sense of context for what we live with here in America,
we're supposed to be like the bastion of freedom and all this nonsense marketing.
No, our workers are more oppressed than almost anywhere else.
Yes, the money is fine, it's not fine overall per person.
Yes, we're richer than other countries, but overall,
remember that's because of the enormous income inequality.
The top have a tremendous amount of money, but that mass,
the oppression that is happening to workers at every other level.
And by the way, there might be in a situation like retirement age,
we don't hate people are living longer,
especially in France because they have a good social safety net.
>> Yeah, the average life expectancy in France by the way is five years longer
than it is here in the United States.
>> Which is also damning for
us because our average person is crunched by our system here.
>> Yeah, and so imagine raising the retirement age from 67 again,
which I think is still too high to 70, which is what Republicans wanna do now.
>> Exactly, and so look, if we had honest governments and they said,
hey no, really, we need to make the pension system more sustainable.
I might hear that out because at some point you have to have balance, right?
But I don't trust any of these neoliberal governments.
I don't trust any of these conservative governments.
When they propose something, there's a 90% chance at least just because there's like
New Zealand and Uruguay who are good governments.
But overall, 90% of the governments are doing it to help the rich and
hurt the middle class and poor.
So no, we don't believe you.
>> Finally, at the risk of triggering a media rant from Cenk,
I do wanna at least reinforce the point you made about how the media would
not report accurately on the efforts by the unions and the workers.
Here is a New York Times opinion guest essay with
the headline, are French people just lazy?
>> [LAUGH] >> Come on, come on.
>> American media at its finest right there.
>> New York Times just had their workers strike over working conditions and pay.
Yeah.
>> Anyway, all right.
>> And the New York Times is a brilliant job of pretending they're not corporate
media, that they're the ones that are the fourth estate,
challenging the government and holding the powerful accountable.
But are the workers just too lazy?
This stuff have to be cut again.
Cut, cut, cut, the rich, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
We don't want any income redistribution around these parts.
>> Exactly. >> Hilarious.