French president filmed saying workers should try to get a job elsewhere instead of ‘kicking up bloody chaos’

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has been criticised after he was filmed accusing disgruntled workers of preferring to stir up “bloody chaos” rather than find jobs, weeks after he called critics of his labour reforms “slackers”.



Macron, who runs a tightly controlled communications strategy from the Élysée Palace, has often berated journalists and commentators for spending too long dissecting his style rather than the content of his message.

But on a visit to a struggling company in south-west France on Wednesday, his habit of making stinging remarks that his critics say are contemptuous of working class people overshadowed his announcements about economic reform.

Macron, who according to his entourage did not know he was being filmed, made the comments while clashes were occurring outside the premises between police and workers protesting against his economic policies.

“Instead of kicking up bloody chaos, some of them would be better off going to see if they can get a job over there,” he said, alluding to an aluminium factory in the region that was seeking new workers. “Some of them have got the qualifications to do it,” he said. “It’s not that far for them to go.”

Macron made the remarks to a regional official, Alain Rousset, who had mentioned the aluminium foundry’s difficulties in finding workers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emmanuel Macron during a visit to Égletons, south-west France. Photograph: Reuters

Critics on all sides seized on the comments, keen to cast Macron, a former investment banker, as out of touch with ordinary people and a “president of the rich” because of his proposed cuts to France’s wealth tax.

Clémentine Autain, of the leftist France Unbowed party, said: “It shows a great class contempt. He can’t stop coming out with unfair comments targeting the masses.”

Others said Macron’s “uncouth” language was resonant of the tetchy former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who never quite recovered from his famous comment “Sod off, you prat,” uttered to a man who refused to shake his hand at an agricultural fair.

A government spokesman, Christophe Castaner, defended Macron, saying: “A president should be able … to use the words that we all use all the time.”

The Élysée was quick to insist the comments had been taken out of context and sought to bat away any accusations of class contempt or of targeting local protesting workers.

But Macron has often been unapologetic about choosing hard language as he seeks to style himself as a pro-business reformer. In early September, days before a union-led protest against his overhaul of French labour laws, he said in a speech that he would not back down “to slackers, cynics and extremists”. The remark became a rallying cry, with protesters coining slogans such as “Slackers of the world, unite!”

In July, visiting a hi-tech startup centre in a converted rail depot, he talked about how at a station it was possible to meet different people – “those who succeed and those who are nothing”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A demonstrator holds up a sign saying ‘I am a slacker’ during a protest in Nantes in September. Photograph: Loïc Venance/AFP/Getty Images

In 2016 while he was economy minister, Macron was confronted by angry trade unionists and was recorded telling one young man: “You don’t scare me with your T-shirt. The best way of paying for a suit is to work.”

When he pleaded for a cut in the cost of getting a driving licence and used as an example female workers at a Brittany abattoir, many of whom he said were “illiterate”, he apologised in parliament and said he had not meant to cause offence.

Macron’s popularity has fallen since his election in May, with his approval rating standing at 32% in a YouGov poll released on Thursday. His supporters maintain that a fall in popularity was inevitable in the current climate and that he would rather enact reforms quickly than chase poll ratings.

Macron was criticised at the start of his presidency for comparing his new role to that of Jupiter, king of the Roman gods, and he has recently sought to get out and talk more to people on the ground.