Macron prepares enabling act to slash contracts, labor rights in France

international | economics and finance | other press Tuesday May 23, 2017 22:52 by 1 of indy

New French President just a corporate stooge

WSWS.org carries a report on the plans of the new French president - Emmanuel Macron -who was presented as an outsider but in fact was not and in cohorts with the corporate controlled media misled the French people, for now he is about to launch the greatest assault yet on workers conditions.

Here is part of the report:

Newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron is preparing a historic assault on jobs, wages and labor legislation, to be rammed through by presidential decree in the face of overwhelming public opposition.

Details of Macron’s plans emerged Monday in the run-up to his meetings Tuesday with trade union and business representatives at the Elysée Palace.

After next month’s legislative elections, Macron will demand an enabling act from parliament authorizing the president to decree changes in French labor law. “The reform of the Labor Code has been well planned,” incoming Prime Minister Edouard Philippe told the Journal du Dimanche. “We will now discuss it to enrich it and explain it. This means discussions with the trade unions, which are indispensable, and a parliamentary discussion which will take place during the vote on the enabling act that will allow the government to impose decrees in a context defined by the parliament.”

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The decrees being discussed indicate that Macron aims to tear up the entire framework of labor relations in France as they emerged from the liberation from Nazi occupation and the social concessions of the immediate post-World War II period.

Many of these decrees aim to re-introduce provisions into the 2016 labor law that the previous Socialist Party (PS) government removed in order to halt strikes and protests against the law. The PS rammed the law through without a parliamentary vote in the face of opposition from 70 percent of the French population, as riot police were sent under the state of emergency to assault protesters and striking workers. Nevertheless, in order to prevent a social explosion, many provisions favored by Macron were removed. He now wants to reinstate them.