Strike or demonstration?

I came across some notes I took while reading the interview with Stan Neumann, director of the excellent Arte documentary Le Temps des ouvriers . It was published in L'Humanité-dimanche on April 23, 2020. I read: "The strike is about solidarity, whereas in the demonstration, everyone is alone. Today, we are more on the side of the demonstration and its solitude. Deep down, the collective perhaps only exists where it is organized by production."

This is enough to fuel many union reflections, to deepen or qualify the argument. Let's take it as simple as possible: the comparison between strikes and demonstrations. There is some truth in the observation made. A look at recent demonstrations confirms this. Apart from the "head squares" that specify the purpose of the demonstration and the list of organizations calling for it, there are fewer and fewer collective banners and more and more flags or placards carried individually.

Strikes need to "manifest" in the public square, in the streets. Demonstrations need strikes to build mass support.

It's more practical, of course, but that's not the point. The banners carried collectively are carried by employees in struggle either in their company or in a particular category: in recent demonstrations, chambermaids in large hotels , or undocumented workers fighting for their regularization have thus taken to the demonstrations to make themselves and their struggle visible. This assumes that they have collectively prepared their participation, have arranged to meet at the demonstration, in short, have organized themselves to make this visibility possible.

They are thus extending old practices where people meet at the picket line in the morning in order to both expand the number of strikers and give new impetus to the action. The strikers arrive together at the demonstration with their slogans and banners. The demonstration is then experienced as an extension of the strike, a means of maintaining it, making it known, ensuring solidarity, and leading it to success. The demonstration, especially when it is interprofessional, can also be a moment where employees of companies without unions find a way to express their discontent and their expectations and to emerge from their isolation.

It can be a trigger for struggles within companies. It is therefore important to detect the presence of these employees waiting for contact in the demonstrations. The number of members of the demonstration reveals the "surface" acquired by the objectives it promotes. Demonstrations and strikes are therefore not opposed, but rather mutually supporting.

Strikes need to "manifest" themselves in the public square, in the streets. Demonstrations need strikes to build mass. They are both a reflection of mobilizations within companies and a means of stimulating new ones, or even of building a social movement. All this, of course, provided that there are organizations, activists to make it possible. If it is true, as Stan Neumann notes, that the organization of production plays an important role in the construction of the collective, it is no less true that the union can contribute to bringing back solidarity and the collective in the very places where the organization of work individualizes and creates competition. This is a major challenge of which June 5th will be one of the demonstrations .