A translation of a communique issued by the CNT, a French anarcho-syndicalist union, about the on-going struggle against the CPE.
Three million demonstrators on Tuesday 28th March! And it was a weekday... so that's three million on strike! Both public-sector and private-sector employees realised how important it was to strike, in order to achieve the greatest number possible on the streets to express their total rejection of the CPE, and indeed of precarious labour in general. But Monsieur de Villepin remains inflexible. It is not a question any more of believing that he is acting deaf. How can he be deaf with this tidal wave of voices? So what is Monsieur de Villepin actually saying? That strikes are illegitimate and outmoded... That he cares little about the size of the popular protest. That whatever the number of the strikers, they will be always a negligible quantity.
In fact, he is taking the risk to state that the only thing that counts is the passing of a law by a handful of parliamentarians, who, as is well known, have no intention of stopping the process of precarization, obsessed by their desire to reinforce capitalist exploitation. And this contempt is evident in the only concrete answer they have given young people: hundreds of arrests, hundreds of cases of police custody, prison sentences and police violence. We denounce all of it.
So, what of the three million strikers of March 28 after this record mobilization in the strike?
To let the prime minister and all governments know that the legitimacy of the workers is not just rhetoric! That the means of production are in our hands. That trains, schools, food, buildings, books, and everything that makes these ministers' days, is not the result of a mouse click but the fruit of the labour of millions of workers. It seems that the prime minister, from the dizzy heights of his ivory tower, has forgotten this.
It is up to us to remind him - by bringing the country to a halt!
No-one else does our work for us, so let no-one else make our decisions for us!
The CNT calls on all workers, on the unemployed, on precarious workers and "sans-papiers" to join with the university and high-school students and participate in the general assemblies, so that sector by sector we can build the strike from the grassroots.
For the cancellation of the "law of equal opportunity", for the cancellation of the CPE and CNE, general strike!
Statement issued on http://www.cnt-f.org
Paris, 29th March 2006
Translation from: http://www.iww.org/en/node/2284
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