text: In February, opposition to the labor law began to spread on the internet in response to the “We’re worth more than that” initiative, with a petition that collected a million signatures in a week’s time. A date for a demonstration also appeared: March 9. The Intersyndicale, a coalition of eight major French unions, was forced to join this demonstration. For the first time in a long time, these protests have created a division between the labor unions demanding the complete rejection of the labor reform law and those wanting only to amend it. The union leadership’s usual strategy of unity was shattered by the surge of grassroots union demands. The members of Solidaires, reputedly the most combative union, forced the leadership to withdraw from the Intersyndicale, since it was out of the question for militant unionists to follow the wanderings of the CFDT (French Democratic Confederation of Labor). Meanwhile, the rank and file members of France’s largest trade union, the CGT (General Confederation of Labor), are pushing its leadership to join the struggle.
  Discontent quickly spread in the streets. On March 9, several hundred thousand people demonstrated, setting new records for some regions and towns, like Toulouse (despite the torrential rain). Already there were hopes for a mass movement but the unions then called for a demonstration on March 31, leaving striking high school students students to continue on their own in daily struggles. With the support of rank-and-file unionists, the students fought on to compensate for the cautious sluggishness of the union leadership. The entire month of March was devoted to building up the struggle. Finally, March 31 was a great success.
  The interval between March 9 and March 31 saw change in the public space: there were widespread leafleting and postering, meetings in companies and factories, struggles in the universities, etc. Universities were at the boiling point. In March, young people made their presence felt on the political scene, shutting down and occupying universities and high schools. This began at the University of Saint-Denis, where students had been on strike since March 8. On the weekend of March 19, around sixty student delegates met to discuss organizing the mobilization. The students formed a general assembly, declaring them self-organized; they refused to recognize leaders other than the ones they chose to representative them. The official student associations, which always step up to negotiate or speak to the media, did not represent the student movement. Though the issue of representation has haunted the French student movement since the 1990s, student strikers haven’t been able to debunk the student unions and associations claiming to be their representatives, which have taken over the media space to speak for the “youth.” This has led, in the current situation, to painful confrontations. The issue is simple: the student strikers want the total withdrawal of the labor reform law, while the official organizations tend to want to negotiate.