French union workers aiming to shut down critical industries across the nation,
walking off the job and into the streets, blockading oil refineries.
Some even starting bonfires and cutting off deliveries to electricity and
gas facilities.
>> [FOREIGN] >> We haven't been heard or listened to,
said this oil refinery worker were using the only means we have left.
It's the hard strike.
>> Well, they're not the only workers who have been striking in France.
In fact, the French Trade Union estimated that 3.5 million protesters and
workers took to the streets to fight against
President Emmanuel Macron's proposed pension changes.
And the French government tried to downplay it by giving a smaller
estimate of get a load of this 1.2 million protesters,
which is an incredible number of people who are taking to the streets
to voice their opposition to Macron's proposals here.
They've brought the country to a standstill over what he wants to do to
pensions.
So Tuesday marked the sixth mass protest in France in recent months.
French Democratic Confederation General Secretary Lauren Berger
said the strike was the biggest of the six.
Here's what the French are so angry and concerned about.
So Macron's reforms or
reform would raise the minimum pension age, sounds familiar and
require 43 years of work to earn a full pension amid other measures.
The government argues that the current system is expected to dive into deficit
within a decade as France's population ages and life expectancy lengthens.
Gee, I've never heard those arguments in the context of the United States before.
>> Yeah, so in their case, they'd be raising the age to 64.
We're at about 67 now.
[LAUGH] >> This is why I love France,
though, right?
>> Yeah. >> Because they're like, no, no, no,
you're not gonna do to us what you, what happened to the Americans, okay?
They start with the 64 and before what we're talking about 70.
No, we're taking to the streets.
>> Yeah, if both France and America have a system that's not as clean and
simple as 64 or 67, there's some different gradations in there.
But overall, yes, we have a retirement age that is, by the way,
France isn't even 64 yet, right?
They're trying to get it to 64.
So we have to work many more years in the French.
The differences in France, this level of protests,
gives me a sense of several things from the outside.
Number one, their workers are a lot more empowered, and
they're used to taking power back.
They're used to taking collective action.
Our unions have been destroyed here in America.
>> That's right, yeah.
>> So, collective action is very difficult.
This kind of almost a general strike here with 1.2 million people at
a minimum that's unheard of in America.
And so the second thing that it tells me is, hey, look at that,
the French have a real press because here in America,
our media would crush these strikes before anyone else even got to them.
They wouldn't tell you about the strikes.
If they did, they'd make it seem like it was the worker's fault, and
they were not taking a good contract offer.
We've shown you so many of those cases from actual articles and
news reports where they make it appear, the workers are totally unreasonable.
And so both the politicians owned by corporate donors and
the media which are giant corporations themselves would end this kind of
protest in America and have ended it, right?
We used to have massive strikes here in this country.
>> That's right, yes.
>> And the West Virginia and Kentucky were the epicenters.
There were populist, they were in those areas are not conservative,
they're populist, there's a huge difference, right?
And they would lead those strikes, and they would be so bold and brave, and
they would be celebrated.
Now, the media has nothing but disdain for them.
So, congratulations, the people of France.
You have it a lot better than you realize, we're dying out here in America, and
most people in America don't even know it.
>> Right, so look, I might regret getting deeper into the media critique angle of
the story, but I can't help it.
You know what the difference is, though, right?
Jake.
When it comes to the media of yesteryear versus media today, I mean,
media today, it's publicly traded, the number one priority is profits.
There is no fairness doctrine.
The media is corrupt in a similar way that politicians are corrupted
by business interests that only care about their profits.
Like that is a huge problem, which is why I don't want anyone to think that I'm
complaining about the coverage of Black Lives Matter, but
I do want you to just think about the difference in how the corporate
media covered BLM protests in the summer of 2020.
How they took it seriously, provided a lot of coverage of it.
Now compare that to how they treated Occupy Wall Street,
Occupy Wall Street that had to do with challenging Wall Street,
challenging big business, challenging the corruption in our system.
The media hated that and immediately squashed it, immediately discredited it.
>> Yeah, I don't want to misinterpret what I was saying.
>> Yeah, it isn't that the Black Lives Matter was left wing.
No, it's a cultural war issue.
So for example, the right wing truckers that were trying to block roads coming in
from Canada because they disagreed with vaccine policy, right?
That's another cultural war issue, so they got tons of coverage.
Whereas, meanwhile, poor striking workers in Alabama get almost no coverage.
>> Exactly, yes.
>> So, when it's a cultural war issue, whether it's on our side or
the right wing side, tons of coverage, right?
When it's an economic issue, we'll bring it down, bring it down.
You can't have a fire without oxygen.
And the job of the corporate media in America is taking away all the oxygen.
Now, back to France, keep on going, brothers and sisters.
We've seen the future here in America.
If you don't make this standing, you don't win.
Now they're just gonna keep taking away all your rights.
>> So real quick, I do wanna give you some more details about the strike.
And also there is this is something worth mentioning when it comes to how the media
in Europe is covering this as well, but first some details about what's going on.
So the sheer scale of these coordinated strikes are mind-boggling,
especially when you think about the context here in the United States,
where we don't really have organized labor that can do the same thing.
So oil shipments were halted by strikes at several refineries.
Workers also cut France's nuclear output.
Garbage collectors went on strike and
blocked access to Europe's biggest incineration plant.
A fifth of flights were canceled at the Paris airport that has a name that I'm not
gonna mispronounce, I'm just gonna move on.
>> [LAUGH] >> Trains to Germany and
Spain were stopped entirely, trains to and from Britain and Belgium
were reduced by one-third, most high speed and regional trains were shut down.
Dockworkers blockaded key seaports.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
Now, I do wanna just talk about the media and
how they're covering it because it's not all good.
So listen to the questions that a BBC anchor asks a French teacher and
a member of the teachers union about the strikes.
>> So the government says that these plans are necessary raising the retirement age
because they say that if they don't simply,
the numbers don't add up, it would be in deficit.
Why is raising the pension age such a problem?
In Germany, the age is 65, in Italy, the age is 67, in the UK,
the age is 66, and in Spain, the age is 65, in France, it is 62 still.
So actually all the government is doing is proposing to bring it some way closer to
being in line with the rest of Europe.
You said this is about being fairer, but I wonder, and I put it to you,
we're all living longer, we're all able to work longer.
And therefore, we are contributing to the system longer because you would expect
to be able to draw that retirement pension much later than perhaps in the past.
So it's only fair that you work a bit longer to pay for it.
>> I'm sorry, I just, I love the British.
>> Were we living long, we chap.
Okay, you're being unfair, I love the motions.
>> But I need to understand, why shouldn't you work until the day you die?
Other countries force their workers to work till the day they die,
why shouldn't you?
At the BBC, that corporate interest but somehow we've also,
I decided to go with conservative talking points.
Like there's no hope anywhere man, the media is so
conservative, it's on economic issues.
It's insane.
It's a giant group think.
>> Yeah.
>> We must protect the powerful.
We must have access to the powerful.
It's disgusting, how about thinking about the workers and in France, well, look at
what that guy's saying, you guys are doing a great job of sticking up for yourselves.
We've beaten the workers in every other country, why won't you surrender already,
to which I say, viva la France.
>> 100% finally, according to the AEF news agency,
63% of French people oppose the government proposal.
So power to the people, keep fighting and tell Macron what's up because I love this.