Minimum wage: the government hesitates over when and how much, the street over why

According to franceinfo, two questions are "on the table" for the government: when to raise the Smic, and by how much. The Smic, France's minimum wage, is central to Thursday's mobilisation over purchasing power. Still according to franceinfo, the executive has already said it is considering bringing forward the automatic uprating, along with a slight "coup de pouce", a discretionary top-up. The dispatch says nothing, at this stage, about the date chosen or the amount: that is precisely what remains to be extracted.

Let us note the timing, because it is anything but innocent. A government that normally insists the Smic is expensive suddenly discovers the virtues of anticipation a few days before a march. Our reading: one never hands out more generously than when a power struggle is approaching. Nothing in franceinfo's report says the mobilisation prompted this U-turn, but it would be terribly naive to think the two events are not talking to each other.

Recall what the "automatic" uprating does: it catches up with inflation, which is to say it prevents people from getting poorer. It gives nothing; it returns a little. The "coup de pouce" is the only part that resembles a raise, and it is already being presented as "slight", before anyone has learned how heavy it will be. This is a rhetoric of measure: we haggle over the size of the crumb before the loaf has been cut.

The trade-union tradition has a simple way of seeing this. Unions fight over the price of labour power: wages, hours, conditions. Marx considered this struggle necessary but insufficient, since it acts on the effects rather than on the wage system itself. Necessary, nonetheless: a minimum wage has never been a gift from the Republic. It is a front line frozen into law, and pushed forward each time the balance of forces allows. As for the solidarity and confidence that a day of strike or demonstration builds, no dashboard at Bercy, the finance ministry's home, measures them.

There is also the underlying question, the one that trade-offs between "when" and "how much" carefully avoid. Wages cover what is needed to reproduce the capacity to work; the rest of the working day produces something else, which goes elsewhere. When productivity gains do not reach payslips, every point of Smic becomes a battle instead of an obvious matter. And Marx noted that even when wages rise, because capital lacks hands, the relationship between those who pay and those who are paid remains intact.

What we do not yet know: the date, the amount, and whether the nudge will survive the week. What we do know: the Republic's motto promises equality, and its minimum wage is being discussed according to the calendar of demonstrations. On Thursday, the street will no doubt answer the question of "how much" better than the ministries.