France: Unité CGT says ‘Block everything!’ on Sept. 10

In this translated article, Unité CGT — the left wing of France’s General Confederation of Labour (CGT) — has issued a call to action. Representing a significant portion of the CGT’s industry federations and departmental unions, the Unité CGT urges workers and their organizations to adopt the slogan “Bloquons tout!” (“Block everything!”) and paralyze France on Sept. 10. The strategy advocates for broadening the mobilization to include factory occupations and a general strike.

A new cycle of class warfare is opening this September. The date of Sept. 10, announced back in July for a “total blockade” of the country, is rallying a vast number of grievances. In reality, this mobilization echoes the powerful Yellow Vest movement of 2018 and the social mobilizations against the pension reforms.

Two years after the abject failure of the inter-union coalition’s strategy in 2023, this season of social unrest is bringing together different segments of the working world in a single movement.

Already, thousands of workers in the electrical and gas industries have been on a renewable strike since Sept. 2. This massive, offensive strike for wages and fair prices could be the engine that gives strength and confidence to all workers. Even better, this strike aims to coincide with Sept. 10, which could mark a new stage in the spread of strikes.

“We won’t take it anymore”: the 2026 budget proposal, a monstrously anti-social measure, was the last straw for many. The list of planned measures is of shocking violence against our social gains, our wages, and our working conditions: elimination of 2 public holidays, freezing retirement pensions and social benefits, de-listing medications from reimbursement, revision of long-term illness status, bleeding funding for local governments and thus our Public Services, attacks on labor law and unemployment insurance. …

The Prime Minister is expected to fall on Sept. 8, the date of a confidence vote in Parliament. It doesn’t matter if this government falls; it doesn’t matter if the President appoints a new Prime Minister from the Socialist Party, the right, or the far right, or declares a new dissolution of the National Assembly.

The time is for class struggle: let’s change the playing field, desert the bosses’ and institutional calendars, let’s make events overflow their course, let’s ignite an atmosphere of social uprising everywhere against those who are butchering our lives.

Let’s anchor the strikes in the workplaces, let’s occupy our worksites, let’s block the economy! For France is in a regime crisis: even more, after 10 years of Macron, legitimate resentment is exploding against the political and economic elites who are pillaging the country and exploiting the workers: “Those at the top can’t govern anymore and those at the bottom won’t take it anymore.” Incidentally, the best antidote against the far-right is the struggle of workers, side by side in the class war against the common enemy.

Forward to block everything through the unity of the workers’ camp, by spreading strikes, offensive actions, and workplace occupations! Forward to make the social movement overflow all bounds until final victory!

Forward to put an end to the status quo, institutionalism, and capitalism and its world of exploitation, misery, famine, genocide, and horrors! 

End of the world, end of the month: same fight! 

[This slogan — “Fin du monde, fin du mois, même combat” — from the gilets jaunes movement is saying “Climate collapse or paycheck shortfall — it’s the same struggle.”]