Nathalie Arthaud, Lutte Ouvrière candidate in the presidential election, called on Saturday April 2 on franceinfo to “increase wages and Smic” to cope with rising prices in France.
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The candidate proposes that salaries be indexed to prices “not once a year, not after 12 months, when we found that there was 6, 7, 8% real inflation”.
“Indexing should be done month after month, if necessary, week after week if necessary.”
Nathalie Arthaud, LO candidateat franceinfo
“The world of work must not accept being impoverished. And of course I include retirees because we know how unworthy retirement pensions are“, he claimed. She refuses the idea that it would be “the demands of employees who are likely to create an inflationary spiral. The inflationary spiral is there. We have nothing to do with it. This inflationary spiral is the fruit of speculators, of war profiteers”she accused.
To those who assert that a general increase in wages would endanger small businesses, Nathalie Arthaud, professor of economics and management, refers to the major strikes of May 1968: “The employers and their defenders explained to the employees: ‘Your demands are madness. You are going to put the economy on the ground, the small businesses, you are going to ruin them’. There was a general strike and it led to a salary increase of 35% of the Smig”she recalled.
She believes that the argument of small businesses that could not make this wage effort “is the alibi for the bigger ones to freeze wages. It’s these big corporations that go after middlemen by the throat. A number of small businesses, small traders would be delighted to finally see their popular clientele have a little more ‘money”she said.