Emmanuel Macron faces down the unions in bid to modernise French economy
Emmanuel Macron is trying to forge a new path for France, but his efforts reveal a fundamental tension between his ambition and the reality of the French condition.
Last year, Macron’s government announced plans to liberalise the economy, starting with employment reform – an area that left his predecessors scarred. Changes to employment law, making it easier to hire and fire workers, came into effect despite significant protest in a move described by prime minister Edouard Philippe as ‘making up for lost years.’
However, bigger tests await Macron. This week, Air France staff, dustmen, utility workers, academics, rail staff and civil servants step up their industrial action in protest over plans to curb the immense privileges and perks enjoyed in so many areas of the French economy.
Employees of the state railway SNCF benefit from automatic annual pay rises, early retirement with full pension and guaranteed protection from redundancy. The government wants to phase out such protections for new employees, as a precursor to opening up the state railway to competition by 2023. Other unions are organising protests against the raising of retirement age (from 60 to 62) while university staff oppose plans to toughen entry requirements for elite courses and institutions.
Against this familiar and predictable French backdrop, Macron last week delivered a major speech setting out an ambitious new national strategy for capitalising on Artificial Intelligence. In an interview with Wired magazine, he identified transportation as one of the major areas ripe for AI disruption.
To flirt with this prospect while simultaneously going into battle with the rail union over relatively modest changes to their current conditions demonstrates either arrogance or admirable candour, depending on your point of view. Either way, Macron is alive to the downsides of automation, saying “my role is not to block this change, but to be able to train or retrain people for them to get opportunities in this new world.”
His ambition is laudable, and he discusses the philosophy, ethics and practicalities of AI in a way that’s hard to imagine Theresa May doing. However, while the future may excite him he faces more immediate difficulties. Without success in liberalising and opening up the French economy, his ambition to recast his country as the natural home of new technology will remain a pipe dream.