Should we fear a social explosion in the face of strike threats?

Strike threats are piling up in all directions: farmers, transport and even the private sector have already announced days of mobilization. Social anger could liven up the winter and paralyze part of the country.

The coming weeks are likely to be turbulent on a social level. Anger is growing among the unions and numerous social movements could punctuate the end of the year.

It must be said that the schedule is busy. First with strikes in the transport sector. The very powerful national union of airline pilots has called on all employees in the airline sector to stop working on November 14to oppose the increase in the tax on plane tickets.

Same mobilization at the SNCF where all the unions filed a strike notice, from Wednesday 20 to Friday 22 Novemberand another for unlimited and renewable movement from the December 1110 days before the Christmas holidays. They are demanding a moratorium on the announced dismantling of Fret SNCF.

The private sector also mobilized

Farmers also want to bring out the tractors. Some have already done it locally but the main agricultural unions – the FNSEA and the Young Farmers – promise a new national mobilization probably from Monday November 18. They oppose the proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur which brings together most of the countries of South America.

“All farmers are in complicated situations with inconsistent and stupid laws,” farmer Jérôme Bayle laments this Tuesday on RMC and RMC Story, raising fears of a large-scale mobilization.

All this without counting the strikes which are beginning to affect the private sector in the face of the multiplication of social plans like at Michelin or Auchan. The general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet speaks of “the beginning of an industrial bloodletting”.

“There is no main ingredient”

Jean-François Amézieu, sociologist specializing in social relations, is more optimistic: “These are just days and warning shots with announcements lasting a few days. There is no main ingredient: a unifying theme,” assures he on the setEstelle Midi.

“Employment and concern are always subjects for mobilization but for there to be a lot of strikes, something unifying is needed,” he insists.

For social anger to unite, there would need to be “a clumsiness on the part of the government”, believes Jean-François Amézieu, who also explains that mobilization from “the base” could also agglomerate social anger like that of the “yellow vests”. “But union initiatives, frankly no,” anticipates the sociologist.