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# From Paris To Dublin: What Ireland Can Learn From France's Protest Movement
- URL: https://aontachtmedia.ie/from-paris-to-dublin-what-ireland-can-learn-from-frances-protest-movement/
- Published: 2026-11-11T14:21:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-11T14:21:20.000Z
- Description: If Ireland wants to take advantage of the wave of revolt in Europe, comrades of all fashions and occupations need to join together in a unitary struggle. After all, their grievances share the same root, which is the capitalists’ exploitation of the working class.
- Author: Chiara Caria 
- Tags: Critical Analysis

On November 5, thousands of people filled the streets of France after France’s major trade unions called for a national strike to demand a rise in the minimum wage, in order for people to survive the current rising cost-of-living crisis. High school and college students also mobilised in great numbers, not simply as a gesture of solidarity towards the French workers, but also to push forward their own demands. 

Social injustice is at the heart of the revolt of high school and university students in France, with teaching posts that are not replaced, overcrowded classes and dilapidated buildings. On the other side, French trade unions have been negotiating with the government for a rise of the Smic (minimum wage), an increase in the budget for pensions and public services, and policies to prevent the rise of living costs, but their reasonable appeals fell on deaf ears. Subsequently, the workers’ growing frustrations over the unfair and unsustainable working conditions, finally boiled over into a mass mobilization to foster real political change in the French labour landscape. The key to the shift that France’s working class struggle experiences was their alliance with the students’ movement. 

**Ireland and France: two nations under one struggle** 

The French have a past of turning the country inside out to demand for change. Over the past 9 years, during which Macron has been keeping his presidential seat, the violence of his neoliberal policies benefited the wealthiest at the risk of ruining the country, which, to the French public, was significantly more violent than a couple trash bins set on fire or some broken store windows. To illustrate some of the protests that have erupted under his presidency, we can recall the overhaul of French labour laws in 2017, followed by the inception of the Yellow Vests movement in 2018, and finally the pensions reform protests, which were all caused by an endeavour of the executive to cut on public welfare, as well as the urban riots following the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy, as a form of revolt against the institutional violence that the French authorities carry out in order to defend capitalism and its ideological bases of race, gender, and labour exploitation. The violent scenes that pervaded the streets of France were the result of a decade in which inequalities have grown, wages have stagnated, and public services weakened against a backdrop of the accumulation of profits by a few. 

Ireland is not lacking in similar grievances, nor should its fight be any less vigorous than the mass protests we have seen erupt before our eyes in France. The cost of living remains the single biggest issue for workers. Corporate profits for supermarkets, energy companies and the financial markets continue to soar, with an estimated growth in energy company profits at 136%, according to a Reuters report. Public sector workers have seen an erosion of their pay over the last five years. Exploratory talks with the government earlier this year failed as the government refused to give any assurance over pay, which led to the public sector strike of this autumn. 

It is crucial to note that French trade unions have experienced the same process of bureaucratization that Irish unions faced. Similarly to Irish trade union leaders, the French ones have been striving to seek partnership agreements with the government since the 80s, rather than fighting for fair labour conditions. French unions derive a large portion of their funding and resources not from member dues, but from the state, employer contributions, and their representation within quasi-governmental and parastatal bodies (managing training funds, unemployment insurance, pensions, and labour courts). This integration created a financial and operational tie to the state and institutional apparatus. Furthermore, the professionalization of unions in France has also influenced the leaders’ ability to relate to the real issues of workers. This process began in 1982, with the Auroux Laws, which guaranteed that union operations would be subsidised by employers and the state rather than relying on worker membership dues, standardizing trade unionism as a professional career path rather than a voluntary movement.Such premises isolated the union representatives, from the workers, turning their job into a search for industrial peace, rather than labour conditions negotiations. Comparably, in the late 80s, Irish union leaders traded influence over government tax and labour policies in return for wage moderation and industrial peace. However, trade unions remain one of the only vehicles to demand for the end to, or at least a decrease in, the capitalist exploitation of the working class. 

On October 14th, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) Public Services Committee coordinated a public sector strike that shut down schools, the Dáil and partially hospitals too. Over 300,000 public sector workers walked off the job to negotiate higher wages, after years of inflation and rising cost-of-living. As the pay dispute is still ongoing, Irish workers struggle seems to have the government in desperate need for a national pay agreement, it would be a waste not to take advantage of the momentum that the workers’ movement can uphold. While the Taoiseach tries to convince the public of the existence of "a very fair offer" on the table in a bid to find a pathway to talks on the pay dispute, the potential strength of the labour movement in their struggle against governmental institutions becomes apparent.

In the meantime, Irish students have been protesting for lower university fees, publicly owned student accommodations and a reduction of the higher education funding gap, as the average costs of attending university rise yearly. At the beginning of last month, more than 1,500 students marched in the centre of Dublin to protest over student fees, the effect the cost of living is having on their education and a lack of accommodation choices. The Irish youth has been living in a country where neoliberal policies have been worsening their own living conditions, through austerity measures and savage privatization of the public sector. Nowadays, they feel abandoned and trapped in a system that does not leave any room for them to grow, to study and even to take care of their own health. In the midst of these two separate struggles, Irish households are bearing the weight of higher utility bills, higher tuition fees for their children, and exacerbating rent prices, without being backed by a higher paycheck. This is precisely the reason why workers and students need to build a unitary movement to resist capitalist exploitation.

**The road to the general strike** 

French students have been protesting since late September to ask for safe school infrastructures, mass recruitment of teachers, a new university admission portal, a reform of the school system that takes into consideration the education as well as the well-being of students, and, overall, an increase in the government spending for public schools, which now have to share most of the national education budget with private institutions. Since the beginning of their struggle, however, the youth movement was met with police brutality, mass arrests and monetary fines, which cause grave and long-term repercussions onto the students and their families. The repressive grip on students’ dissent represent an attempt of the Macron administration to try to suppress the youth mobilizations at their very start, before the movement became too strong to be hindered. 

Unfortunately for President Macron and his Prime Minister Lecornu, the students were not left alone in their battle for a better education. At first, it was the secondary school teachers who took to the streets alongside their students. At the core of the students' demands, after all, there is the lack of infrastructures and teachers’ shortages that French public schools highly suffer from. Classrooms are overcrowded, which makes their job considerably more difficult. Moreover, teachers in France are forced to carry out their work for extraordinarily low wages, and their contracts are often short-term, leaving them in a perpetual state of job insecurity. Many school teachers have been taking part in their pupils’ struggle from the very beginning. In the Paul Eluard High School, the shutdown started on September 25th. That same night, the police erupted into the school, harassed students, arrested them, and committed various acts of plain brutality on children. In the early morning of the following day, their teachers decided to join them in their lockdown. On their side, teachers are also facing legal repercussions for their solidarity with their students. Over the past month, the school administration has initiated multiple individual investigations on the protesting teachers. 

As the legal repercussions for both students and teachers increased, the students’ families did not just stand and watch. Many minors are currently imprisoned for their either peaceful or violent protesting, and their families joined their struggle to fight against what they see as an unjust treatment towards school children. Parents and teachers alike have been a necessary presence in the students’ protests, acting as witnesses of the inappropriate use of force by the hands of the police corps, with many students wounded. 

However, it is the trade unions’ participation that really changed the prospects of the youth movement. When unions call for and allow their registered workers to strike, the numbers can rapidly increase, thus granting more power to the movement as a whole. 

The mobilizations in France do not come without a price for the protesters, but that does not preclude them from continuing to fight for an affordable life. Furthermore, French comrades have found ways to take care of one another during these trying times. Throughout the days of protest in the streets of France, fliers were distributed to contribute to the protesters’ legal fees, as well as to sustain them in their struggle against Macron’s government. Mutual aid is crucial in a moment where the potential for political change is high, but also the possibility of serious repercussions on the protesters and organisers.

Unlike the student protests that have charged the streets in the past decade, Gen Z movements are extremely politicised. In the face of the unequal distribution of the fruit of production, to the benefit of capital and to the detriment of labour, a renewal of the popularity of a redistribution of income and wealth is only natural. Students do not simply ask for reforms: their struggle has the potential to become a revolutionary movement. They are not requesting new schools, new teachers, or new university websites, but rather, they are expressing their desire for a new way of understanding education, which allows the working class to have full access to it. Years of neoliberal policies in education have stranded the French public schools, which prompted for a great divide between the bourgeoisie’s and working class’ access to cultural capital. 

The French government does not seem to have understood the revolutionary potential of the youth struggle, which is why it is doing everything in its power to repress it without complying with any of their requests. This is an extraordinary mistake on the government’s side, because the resilience of the students is a fact that could not be more evident. Gen Z’s uprising will not cease until their requests are met. If anything, the mass arrests of minors are making the movement stronger, as more and more people from different backgrounds join the students’ struggle especially due to the despicable violence that the authorities inflicted on minors. The institutional violence that followed the October 17th riots marked the repeated incapacity of a president to compromise with social movements. Non-violent demonstrators were gassed and rounded up, some injured and mutilated, public buildings set ablaze and ravaged, streets barricaded and devastated by the clashes between police and protesters. 

**For a united front in Ireland** 

When French PM Sébastien Lecornu invited trade unions representatives to talks on the 19th of October, the CGT union insisted that youth movements’ representatives should be called into the negotiation table as well, and decided to go to Matignon for talks just in order to require answers to the demands of workers and students. After the meeting, which mainly resulted in an occasion for the Prime Minister to complain about the riots that constituted a significant element of the past few weeks’ protests, without leaving space for the trade unions to discuss their actual demands, unions and student organisations prepared to continue their struggle. A wave of mass protests ensued, which blocked France’s chains of production and logistics, as well as services on several occasions during the course of the next weeks. 

Just like in the case of France, Irish public service workers cannot stand alone in their struggle if they want to succeed. Mass walkouts are an extremely valuable tool, but it is not enough to contrast 40 years of neoliberal policies and privatization that has devastated the Irish working class. 

Unfortunately, the strength of the French movement lies within its numbers, and the Irish public needs to catch up. By building a unitary movement, workers of all professions and students have the chance to demand the redistribution of wealth and better living conditions. 

If Ireland wants to take advantage of the wave of revolt in Europe, comrades of all fashions and occupations need to join together in a unitary struggle. After all, their grievances share the same root, which is the capitalists’ exploitation of the working class. 

The ongoing pay negotiations between unions and government can also pave the way for a greater mobilisation, which might have the capacity to not only shut down public services, but also the core of Ireland’s production chains, and their related transportation, as well as schools and universities. A national strike can be organised through an alliance between workers and students, their demands could be tied together for a stronger chance of success in their struggle against the cost-of-living crisis. The Irish public needs to take to the streets their frustration over a government unwilling to care for them, to listen to their demands, and that is actively pursuing corporate interests rather than those of its own people.