If Robin Hood”he stole from the rich to give to the poor” around the Sherwood forest, in France, the technicians of the main gas and electricity distribution companies have replaced the bow and arrows with the tools of the trade, with the aim of helping families in difficulty to pay bills at a reduced price, or not to pay at all. They wear gloves and a mask, they are dressed in black, and since February – coinciding with the start of the protests that have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets to challenge the pension reform proposed by Emmanuel Macron – they roam the condominiums where they carry out the regular gas reading to tamper with the meters and cabins, ensuring that only half of the actual consumption of the residents is recorded.
“Electricity and gas increased! Amputee purchasing power! Angry technicians!» reads the blue sticker that electricians leave on the meters after each action. When the substations do not have the device that directly transmits the information to the distributor, then the consumption register can be completely reset, without the company realizing it immediately. In this way the families receive a zero account. «Operation 100 percent free for the inhabitants of this area. And our employer won’t notice it until he sends a technician to read the meters, in six months or more», two of them told the French site Mediapart, which was the first to tell the story of the “Robin Hoods of bills ”.
Help the poor
The technicians interviewed by the site call themselves Paul and Marcel, fictitious names inspired by Paul Marcel, French trade unionist and former Minister of Industrial Production, appointed by Charles de Gaulle in 1945, who took charge – the following year – of nationalizing the production, distribution and supply of gas and electricity and created the special Edf-Gdf national agency, which would later be divided into two separate bodies for gas and electricity. It is precisely to the former minister, of communist faith and detained in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, that we owe the special regime that employees in the sector still enjoy today, who can request early retirement.
But perhaps for a little while longer. The pension reform approved in the Senate last March 16 and the subject of street protests also seeks to cancel the social security guarantees of workers in some sectors introduced at the end of the 1940s. In fact, the executive reform project is universal, i.e. it concerns all workers. “They want to abolish our social security scheme even if it is balanced, with a surplus from which they can draw to pay part of the contributions to the general scheme,” one of the two electricians told the site. “But since this doesn’t fit into their narrative, they try to do as they already did for the Snfc (national company of French railways, ed): they increase the number of temporary workers to have fewer permanent employees who contribute to the special scheme,” added the second.
According to the CGT, one of the largest trade union confederations in France, the cancellation of the special contribution schemes is not only a technical choice, but corresponds to a precise and violent political will. For this reason, in addition to taking part in the riots against raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, workers in the electricity sector have decided to protest the meters, inspired by the actions already carried out in 2004, when the two companies Edg and Gdf were transformed from public bodies to joint stock companies, opening up to private investors. Since then this type of intervention has been used other times, but in the hot months of 2023 it aims to have the reform withdrawn, which also provides, starting from 2027, to raise the number of years of contributions necessary to go into pension.
In disguise
The “Robin Hood actions” kicked off from the city of Marseille, where Mediapart followed Paul and Marcel on one of the missions in mid-February. The two begin to move at the first light of dawn inside a car lent by some acquaintances so as not to be identified by the license plate of their vehicles. They travel without smartphones so as not to be geolocated and try to avoid surveillance cameras. They know that getting caught is equivalent to losing their job or facing legal action. But they think the risk is worth it. “If we don’t cost this government dearly, we will never get the pension reform revoked,” they said. They find that electricity and gas costs are now too high, and that they contribute to depriving the life of middle-class families of dignity. On the other hand, the social movement that the bill presented by the government has unleashed is the most important in the last thirty years and has been protesting for months not only against the pension reform but, as we tell in the pages of this issue, against a socio-economic model devoted to production, which does not care about the general well-being of citizens. Who ask for more free time to live and think for themselves.
In the trunk of the two electricians there are also flags, megaphones and CGT stickers. Their interventions do not consist only in tampering with electricity or gas meters, but in restoring access to homes where supplies have been cut off after non-payment of bills: approximately 500 families have benefited from the “Robin actions Hood”. According to Mediapart, around 15 booths inside several apartment buildings in Marseille had been tampered with by mid-February, and hundreds of residents have taken advantage of the discount. On the other hand, across the country there are over 60,000 residents who can expect a bill cut in half, more than 100,000 families whose electricity meters have been disconnected and about thirty health facilities that are not paying for electricity. But even some public sports centres, kindergartens, libraries, canteens, small businesses, artisans or bakers will be able to pay for electricity and gas at a reduced price thanks to the electricians’ raids. In the program then there would also be the will to cut supplies to deputies who have declared themselves in favor of pension reform, like real Robin Hoods who “take away from the rich”.
“A Grain of Sand”
According to the trade unionists of the CGT and according to the workers in the electricity sector, the special regime they have benefited from in recent years should not only be safeguarded, but extended to all male and female workers, because they believe in a welfare based on a principle of solidarity , according to which everyone contributes to the state coffers according to their means, and in which wealth must be distributed fairly. For this reason they believe that there is nothing illegal in their actions of civil disobedience: they want to defend an idea of social justice increasingly threatened by the law of the market. They know that the bill protest is just “a grain of sand” that will not fully help families in difficulty and will not prevent the large energy multinationals from speculating on price increases, but it is what they feel they can do to contribute to the fight social, demonstrating that they can use the tools of their work and the means of production they know to achieve a common goal.
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