Painful Re-Entry

In France, the term la rentree does not refer only to spacemen plunging back into the earth's atmosphere but also to vacationers returning to the daily grind from their month-long August break. This year, re-entry for millions of Frenchmen was as rough as it ever was for an astronaut in his red-hot cap sule. For none was it more painful than President Georges Pompidou.

Price Police. In the wake of his 121% devaluation of the franc, Pompidou launched an austerity program that featured a freeze on most prices. Despite the efforts of the Finance Ministry's "price police" -- an army of footsore men in serge suits who carry large account books and check prices in thousands of shops -- France's legion of small shop keepers almost immediately began pushing prices up. In Paris, roughly 1 in every 10 shopkeepers broke the line and marked up prices an average of 5%. Last week the workers, reacting to the austerity program, were staying home from work in greater numbers than at any time since the nationwide shutdown in May 1968. The strikes constituted the first real challenge to Pompidou's authority and could well lead to an early showdown between his fledgling government and France's huge, Communist-dominated labor unions.

Workers on the nationalized railways struck for seven days, halting 60% of France's trains and stranding hundreds of families home-bound from vacation. The trainmen finally settled for about a two-hour reduction in their 46-hour work week. In Paris, a wildcat strike of subway workers brought the underground Metro's 17 lines to a virtual standstill. When bus drivers joined in, as so often before, Paris became a city of pedestrians and monumental traffic jams. Post-office workers served notice that they intend to walk off their jobs next week.

Caste System. Far worse trouble may lie ahead for Pompidou. That became evident when Georges Seguy, the Communist leader of France's 1,500,000-member Confederation Generale du Travail, warned that Pompidou's term of office "might well be short" because of labor unrest. Without mentioning Seguy by name, Pompidou responded with noticeable speed--and anger. He was convinced, he told his Cabinet last week, that workers "will not be duped and will not let themselves be drawn into irrelevant or violent actions." In any case, he warned, the government would take every step to ensure "republican order is maintained."

Against this backdrop of growing conflict, Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas went before the National Assembly to unveil the government's program for la Nouvelle Societe--a phrase apparently intended as the slogan of the Pompidou administration. The Deputies routinely approved the program, 369 to 85, but what really impressed them was Chaban-Delmas' speech--one of the frankest assessments of France's shortcomings ever made by a national leader (see following story). French society, he declared, is "blocked" and "archaic." Demands from almost every sector for special protection and privilege have made the government "tentacular and ineffective." As for France's resistance to change, Chaban-Delmas said: "Frenchmen too frequently prefer to fight with words, even if they cover dramatic failures rather than realities."

Herculean Change. Chaban-Delmas went on to outline the Pompidou program. Proposed reforms involve top-to-bottom changes in almost every area:

sbGreater autonomy for nationalized transportation, now subsidized by Paris to the annual tune of $2 billion.

sbIncreased credits for education.

sbLarger family allowances for those with greater needs, rather than a standard sum for everybody.

sbA cut in military service from 16 months to twelve.

sb A 40% increase in investment in France's crossed-wires telephone system.

sbA relaxation of government control over radio and TV networks.

sbA reorganization of the labyrinthine French bureaucracy.

Obviously impressed, Paris' Le Monde described the plan as "a herculean task" that requires nothing less than the "unblocking of French society." Whatever else it may be, the sweeping program must also be considered an implied rebuke to Charles de Gaulle, who tried but failed to reshape French society during his eleven years of rule.

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