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Striking workers disrupted French refinery deliveries, public transport and schools on Tuesday in a second day of nationwide protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to allow people to work longer before retirement.
Scores of people have marched in French cities to denounce reforms that raise the retirement age by two years to 64 and are a test of Macron’s ability to deal with change now that he has lost his majority in parliament.
In the rail network, only one in three high-speed TGV trains are operating and even fewer local and regional trains. Services on the Paris metro were suspended.
Marching behind banners that read “No to reform” or “We will not give up,” many said they would take to the streets as needed to force the government to step down.
“We won’t drive until we’re 64!” bus driver Isabelle Texier spoke at the protest in Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic coast.
“For the president, it’s easy. He sits in the chair … he can work until he’s 70, even,” he said. “We can’t get the roof layer to work up to 64, it’s not possible.”
After January 19, when more than one million people took to the streets on the first day of the national strike, unions said preliminary data from protests across the country showed a greater turnout.
“Better than the 19th … it’s a real message sent to the government, saying we don’t want 64 years,” Laurent Berger, who heads the CFDT, France’s largest trade union, said ahead of the Paris march.
Polls show a majority of French people oppose the reforms, but Macron wants to stand his ground. The reforms are “crucial” to ensure the viability of the pension system, he said Monday.
A sense of surrender
Some feel a backlash amid bargaining between Macron’s governing alliance and conservative opponents who are more open to pension reform than the left.
“There is no point in going on strike. This bill will be adopted in any case,” said Matthieu Jacquot, 34, who works in the luxury sector.
The union says half of its primary school teachers have quit their jobs. TotalEnergies said 55 per cent of its workers on the morning shift at its refineries have downed their tools, a number lower than on January 19. The hard-left CGT union says this figure is inaccurate.
For unions, the challenge is to sustain the strike movement at a time when high inflation erodes wages.
At the local level, some declared an illegal “Robin Hood” operation by the government. In the south-western Lot-et-Garonne region, the local branch of the CGT trade union cut power to some speed cameras and disabled smart power meters.
“When there’s so much opposition, it’s dangerous if the government doesn’t listen,” said Mylene Jacquot, general secretary of the civil servants branch of the CFDT union.
Reforming the pension system will generate an additional 17.7 billion euros ($25.8 billion Cdn) in annual pension contributions, according to Labor Ministry estimates.
Unions say there are other ways to raise revenue, such as taxing the wealthiest or asking wealthy employers or pensioners to contribute more.
“These reforms are unfair and brutal,” said Luc Farre, secretary general of the civil union UNSA.
‘Non-negotiable’
France’s power supply fell by 4.5 percent, or three gigawatts, as workers at nuclear reactors and thermal plants joined the strike, data from utility group EDF showed.
TotalEnergies said deliveries of petroleum products from the French site had stopped, but that customers’ needs had been met.
The government made some concessions when drafting the law. Macron initially wanted the retirement age to be set at 65, while the government also promised a minimum pension of 1,200 euros per month.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said the 64 threshold was “non-negotiable,” but the government was exploring ways to offset some of the impact, particularly on women.
Leftist opposition figure Jean-Luc Melenchon, a vocal critic of the reforms, said parliament would debate Monday a motion calling for a referendum on the matter.
“The French are not stupid,” he said during a march in Marseille. “If this reform is important, it should be convincing.”
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