From what I know, concessions were granted and the strikes stopped. Most people (about 70% French were against, I think) saw those strikes less as worrying for existing employees and more as setting things straight for the future, and I suspect this is how unions saw it too. In the end, no "stealing benefits" happened, and the matter of interest in that issue was bringing things on par with the other categories of employees.
And one can argue even for existing transport employees, given that the issue was about privileges granted without any counterparty. It was not so absurd that they be given up purely and simply.
I like the way you argue about contracts and courts (the establishment), although it fits little with your previous fiery talk :) Anyway French unions were often in the stronger negotiating positions, as unplausible as you might think it.
The state cannot come five years later and ask for the money back, of course, when it's about salary; when it's about pensions 20-30 years from now, the state can make adjustments so that you have to work 40 years for them, like everybody else, since you don't provide any counterpary in return to justify such positive discrimination. Nuancing. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
From what I know, concessions were granted and the strikes stopped.
So an illegitimate policy was being proposed, workers went on strike against it, the worst aspects were withdrawn and the strike stopped. How is this in any way an illegitimate use of the strike weapon?
The state cannot come five years later and ask for the money back, of course, when it's about salary; when it's about pensions 20-30 years from now,
Those pensions were part of the salary. That's the way a pay-as-you-go system works, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you. The Danish system is different - here, pension contributions are paid immediately to private accounts. Under the Danish system, pension contributions could have been lowered as part of the ordinary labour market negotiations without compensating workers under existing benefit plans, because the money had already been set aside for them. But under the French system, the pension benefits that would have been paid out thirty years from now were part of their salary today. That they were not actually set aside as such is merely a technicality of differing accounting practises, and in no way does this justify stealing them.
If I hire you for € 10000 a month and pay € 1000 a month to a private pension plan, I cannot simply retract 20 % of your private pension savings because I decide that I don't want to pay you that much in pension benefits anymore. OTOH, if I hire you under a pay-as-you-go pension scheme, I pay you € 10000 a month and promise in your contract that I'll support a pension scheme with a net present value of € 1000 pr. month. According to you I can then at a later date decide that I only want to actually pay out 80 % of that - and since the money didn't change hands in the first place, this is perfectly fine?
The only difference between these two cases is that in the pay-as-you-go system, the employer keeps the € 1000 - or, more correctly, borrows the € 1000 until the pension is actually paid out. So according to you, employees should be punished for trusting their employer with their pension savings?
(And as an aside, even if it had only been a benefit cut for future employees, striking against it would still have been a perfectly normal part of labour market negotiations. Non-tenured employees are allowed to go on strike, and if their strikes disrupt service, then it's the employer's fault for not hiring tenured employees. That's a basic, basic principle of all reasonably civilised versions of capitalism.)
the state can make adjustments so that you have to work 40 years for them, like everybody else, since you don't provide any counterpary in return to justify such positive discrimination. Nuancing.
Not when you have already worked for five or ten years under the current contract, they can't. They could have done it if they had a) compensated the workers up-front for the net present value of their future benefit loss or b) stipulated that it only applied to all new hires.
I like the way you argue about contracts and courts (the establishment), although it fits little with your previous fiery talk :)
There is no contradiction here: Courts and contracts have their place in a democratic system. Labour unions, strikes and blockades (even sabotage) have their place in a democratic system. Politicians, parliaments and laws have their place in a democratic system.
I just objected to the way you were trying to sweep much of civil society under the rug and deny it its institutional legitimacy - I never meant to imply that courts, contracts and parliaments have no institutional legitimacy, only that they don't hold a monopoly on it...
Anyway French unions were often in the stronger negotiating positions, as unplausible as you might think it.
Of course they are, unions are supposed to be in the stronger negotiating position. That does not, however, change the fact that under almost all democratic jurisprudence, the state is presumed the stronger party. Just as the fact that most trans-nats are in reality much stronger than the states they demand concessions from does not change their rights to compensation when those concessions are revoked (unless it can be proven - which it of course often can in the case of trans-nats, but less often in the case of labour unions - that they used illegal means to acquire those concessions in the first place).
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
I just told you why that wasn't such illegitimate policy.
I just told you the reason to go on strike was the fact of doing away with a privilege, as a principle. When it became clear that the new principle is equality, and no privilege without counterparty, the talk actually started on the pragmatic issues.
Often, less often, illegal means, stealing... Oh well. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
I wonder if you even read the explanation of the way a pay-as-you-go system compares to a privatised accounts system? Because you don't seem to have given any reason for why the employer can take the employee's money when he has borrowed it, but not when he has deposited it with a third party.
Does depositing money with a third party automatically launder the money and make it safe from the employer taking it? Does the employer have the right to refuse to repay money that he has borrowed just because he borrowed it from his employees?
When it became clear that the new principle is equality, and no privilege without counterparty, the talk actually started on the pragmatic issues.
There are two distinct issues at play here. The first issue is whether or not it is legitimate to strike on account of announced benefit cuts. And if you don't have tenure, it clearly is. If you don't have tenure, you can strike for whatever damn reason you want, and it's the employer's problem if he doesn't have enough tenured employees to cover his ass when that happens.
The other issue is whether an employer can renege on benefit payments from a pay-as-you-go benefit scheme. I can see no reason - even in principle - that he should be allowed to do that. In a pay-as-you-go scheme, the employer has been borrowing his employees' pension funds - funds that he would otherwise have had to pay out to third parties, who would then hold them in trust for his employees. As long as the employer doesn't default on the pension, that's a great idea, because it dispenses with a middleman who would otherwise have to be given a cut. But why does it allow the employer to suddenly renege on his debt?
You never answered that. You never even attempted to answer that. And the fact that other parts of the French labour force was robbed of their pensions is a complete red herring - that my neighbour robs a bank does not automatically permit me to rob a bank as well.
