France: Unité CGT says ‘Bloquons tout!’

We republish here a translation of an article by Unité CGT – the left wing of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) in France, representing a significant number of its industry federations and Departmental Unions. In it, Unité CGT calls for the workers and their trade union organisations to take up the rallying cry of Bloquons tout! and shut down France on 10 September. They call for this mobilisation to be broadened to include factory occupations and a general strike.

This demand is 100 percent correct. The enormous class anger that exists in France should be channelled by all major unions, including the CGT, to mobilise the full force of the working class against the rotten austerity government of Macron and Bayrou. The capitalists are preparing further unprecedented attacks on the workers and poor: in the words of Unité CGT, let’s change the terrain, block the economy and put an end to capitalism!

To hear a full discussion of the article and the events in France, listen to the latest episode of our current events podcast, Against The Stream and read the analysis of Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire, French section of the Revolutionary Communist International.

A new round of class warfare begins this September. 10 September, announced in July as the day of a ‘total blockade’ of the country, has galvanised widespread anger. In reality, this mobilisation echoes the powerful Yellow Vests movement of 2018 [see here] and the social mobilisations against pension reforms in 2023 [see here].

Two years after the lamentable failure of the inter-union strategy in 2023 [see this article by Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire], this social back-to-school season is bringing together different segments of the working world into a single movement.

Thousands of workers in the electricity and gas industries have already been on a renewable strike since 2 September. This massive and aggressive strike for wages and fair prices could be the driving force that gives strength and confidence to all workers. Better still, this strike aims to link up with the mobilisation on 10 September, which could be a new stage in the generalisation of strikes.

‘We've had enough’: the 2026 draft budget, an anti-worker monstrosity, was the last straw for many. The list of measures represent an unprecedented attack on our social gains, our wages and our working conditions: they include the abolition of two public holidays, a freeze on pensions and social benefits, the ending of subsidies for medicines, a review of the status of those with long-term illness, cuts to local government budgets and therefore to our public services, attacks on labour rights and unemployment insurance, etc.

The Prime Minister is expected to fall on 8 September, the date of the vote of confidence in Parliament. It does not matter if this government falls. It does not matter if the President appoints a new Prime Minister from the Socialist Party, the right or the far right, or decrees a new dissolution of the National Assembly.

The time has come for class struggle: let's change the terrain, let's abandon the calendars of our employers and political institutions. Let's overwhelm the course of events. Let's breathe life into the climate of social uprising against those who are destroying our lives.

Let's strike, occupy our workplaces, block the economy! For the French regime is in crisis: after 10 years of Macron, legitimate resentment is exploding against the political and economic elites who are plundering the country and exploiting workers: “those at the top can no longer rule and those at the bottom no longer want to be ruled”. Incidentally, the best antidote to the far right is the struggle of workers, side by side in the class struggle against their common enemy.

Forward! Let's block everything with widespread strikes, offensive actions, and workplace occupations, united as workers! Forward to make the social movement overflow until final victory!

Forward to put an end to the status quo, its institutions and capitalism and its world of exploitation, misery, famine, genocide and horror! End of the world, end of the month, same fight [a slogan from the gilets jaunes movement, referring to the climate and cost of living crisis]!