The national day of action organized Thursday, November 10 for the rise in wages by the CGT brought together 30,400 people throughout France, announced the Ministry of the Interior. The union claimed “more than 100,000 attendees”. In Paris, the police counted 2,400 demonstrators, and the CGT counted 10,000.
These figures mark a mobilization greater than that of the previous day of CGT action, October 27, but a decline compared to that of October 18, when the ministry had counted 107,000 demonstrators throughout the country and the CGT 300,000. In other cities across the country, few people took to the streets. The police counted a thousand demonstrators in Lyon, 650 in Lille, 300 in Bordeaux.
The strike at the call of all the unions of the RATP seriously disrupted the circulation of the Paris metros and RERs. Only fully automated lines 1 and 14 ran normally, with a “risk of saturation”. Five lines remained fully closed (2, 8, 10, 11 and 12)the others only running during peak hours, with a severely degraded service.
“If we don’t live up to our demands, the movement will last much longer than today”, warned Arole Lamasse, Unsa-RATP general secretary. In the event of a stumbling block in discussions between social partners and management, the union has raised the possibility of an indefinite strike as of next week. “We are ready for it, we are prepared for it”explained the manager on BFM TV.
“There is a real problem of purchasing power in this country, it is only by increasing wages that we can solve it”hammered the secretary general of the CGT Philippe Martinez, in the parade of Nîmes, where he had gone to meet the strikers of the CHU.