THOUSANDS OF French university employees marched through the streets of Paris yesterday to protest against a draft decree that would alter the status of teacher-researchers and increase required training for primary and secondary school teachers from three to five years.
The protesters also oppose budget cuts that will do away with close to 1,000 teaching jobs.
The university strike, now in its second week, particularly frightens French president Nicolas Sarkozy's government, after a general strike on January 29th that mobilised some 1.5 million people across the country. "The movement which is shaking up French universities could provide the spark that ignites the explosion," an editorial in Libérationnewspaper predicted.
Trade unions have announced their intention to stage another “day of action” on March 19th if they are not satisfied with negotiations scheduled to start at the Élysée Palace on February 18th.
In a television interview last week, Mr Sarkozy sought to buy time by deferring important issues to talks with social partners, which he said could last between three and six months.
The university movement risks becoming a catalyst for widespread dissatisfaction in France over Mr Sarkozy’s €26 billion economic stimulus plan, which is seen to favour management over employees. If students join in and lecture theatres are occupied – as happened in the May 1968 student rebellion – it will weaken Mr Sarkozy’s hand in resisting demands for a higher minimum wage and other measures to increase purchasing power.
Mr Sarkozy’s troubles are aggravated by a three-week-old strike over the high cost of living in the West Indian department of Guadeloupe, a French region in the Caribbean. The unrest is now spreading to the nearby island of Martinique.
Police said 17,000 demonstrators participated in the Paris march, while organisers put the number at 50,000. Protests of between 1,000 and 6,000 people occurred in Marseille, Grenoble, Lyon, Rennes and Toulouse.
Mr Sarkozy helped to precipitate the university strike by condemning the “mediocrity” of research which is “ill-adapted to the challenges of knowledge” in a speech on January 22nd.
The draft decree that has prompted the strike would modify the status of 62,000 teacher-researchers, as defined in a 1984 text. They would be evaluated by a national council every four years, instead of being evaluated only when they come up for promotion as is currently the situation.
The text would also allow university presidents to assign more teaching hours to researchers.
The government seems to be back-peddling on the decree. Valérie Pécresse, the minister for higher education, now talks of "reworking" the text and has appointed a mediator from the cour des comptes, a government watchdog, to "re-examine modalities" over the next two months.
Mr Sarkozy would lose face if he abandons the reform. In December, he postponed a secondary school reform and gave up attempts to legalise Sunday shopping. He often points to a 2007 law granting autonomy to universities as an example of his determination to achieve change and the first big success of his term.