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Written by Piero Messina
The Confédération générale du travail (CGT) has blocked the country to contest the high prices and the loss of purchasing power caused by inflation. With the march on October 16, hundreds of thousands of Parisians marched from Place de La Nation to La Bastille shouting “we have no petrol but the energy of our legs”. And today it has been replicated
The sector in the front row is that of refinery workers: for weeks the petrol stations have almost all been dry. To avoid the collapse of the system, the Macron government tried the injunction card. But it was a boomerang. The strike proclaimed by the CGT was also joined by the school, the transport sector and public workers. It looks like a reissue of “Jilet jauns”. But this time, even if public opinion remains distant from the protest until now, the government led by Emmanuel Macron seems disarmed. And France looks like a powder keg ready to explode.
The image of chaos is that of a war between rich and poor. It is no coincidence that the protest came from workers in the energy sector. Workers who have wages destroyed by inflation and contest the very rich bonuses that managers in the oil sector collect. A situation of total imbalance that the shortage of energy products caused by the war being fought in Ukraine has even exacerbated. For the oil companies, they are not the French ones, this war is a blessing, because the turnover has grown out of all proportion.
In the first half of 2022 alone, Total in fact recorded profits of $ 10.6 billion, while ExxonMobil, which controls Esso, did even better, given that the net revenue in the second quarter of the year was 17.9. billions of dollars. The same situation also in Italy, where Eni, the state-controlled energy company generated profits of billions in 2022.
A paradoxical situation that has prompted even the moderate French Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin to appeal to the managers of the industry for fairer salaries: “A worker, an employee who works, must be remunerated with the right salary – said the government exponent in a radio interview, adding that “today people observe that their salaries do not follow the increase in prices”. In short, in France it is a black crisis.
Energy workers have made it known that they will not yield an inch. They want the pay rise. The Total company seems willing to meet the demands of those who protest. Nothing on the part of ExxonMobil, which does not even seem willing to open the deal.
According to French political analysts, the real risk is that the protest will spread to other categories of workers. Inflation is eroding the purchasing power of all workers. There is a risk of the contagion effect. The effects of the energy crisis are beginning to show the fragility of a common European policy. Threats to Russia do not work: the idea of imposing a price cap on gas and oil from Moscow have been rejected by Russian companies. The application of the price cap will automatically result in a stop to supplies. So every European nation runs alone. Germany has launched a 200 billion euro fund to cover the expensive energy. France has introduced measures to contain energy costs. Europe no longer has a common policy. It is only a matter of time to understand how deep the rift is within Europe. It is certainly the end of the global dream for the Old Continent. Macron’s political strategy demonstrates this. The French president has one thing in mind more than others: to bring as much production back to France as possible. In French it is called Autarcie. And it is an economic dogma of fascism.
