Strikes and parades marked Thursday in France the fifth day against a decried pension reform, but the movement was less followed and the ranks of the demonstrations more sparse, the unions emphasizing the next mobilization of March 7, where they threaten to bring the country “to a standstill”.
These unions also wish with this fifth day to maintain the pressure on the deputies, whose heated debates on this reform project end Friday at midnight, before the transmission of the text to the Senate, the upper house of Parliament.
The inter-union front wants above all to put all its forces in the balance on March 7, when it threatens to put the country “at a standstill” if the government does not give up raising the minimum retirement age to 64. years, against 62 today.
In the middle of the school holiday period, with the exception of the Paris region and Occitanie (south-west), participation in strikes on Thursday is set to drop sharply.
In Paris, the CGT union announced the figure of some 300,000 demonstrators on Thursday. The police counted 37,000 people. This is less than during the last day of mobilization on Saturday, when the CGT had identified 500,000 demonstrators in the capital and the authorities 93,000.
In Montpellier (south-east), the ranks were much more sparse than for the fourth day of mobilization on Saturday (7,200 participants against 20,000 according to the authorities).
Same thing in Toulouse (south-west), where the organizers counted 65,000 demonstrators and the police, 14,000 (against 100,000 and 25,000 on Saturday). In Le Havre (north-west), they were 5,800 according to the prefecture, 20,000 according to the unions (7,800 and 20,000 on Saturday).
“On March 7, we block everything”
In the procession of the demonstration in Marseille (south-east), Isabelle Marilier, a 75-year-old retiree, denounced a “deception” by the government on the minimum pension of 1,200 euros per month (a little more than 1,700 $ CA): “ They take us for quiches! she said.
“On March 7, everything is blocked, everything must stop everywhere”, launched on the sidelines of the demonstration in Montpellier the leader of the party La France insoumise (radical left), Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Student and high school organizations have also called for “hardening the movement” against the pension reform, with a day of youth mobilization on March 9. Several university sites were closed Thursday, especially in Paris.
Disruptions are limited in transport, with 14% of strikers at the national railway company SNCF and normal traffic in the Paris metro.
However, flights were canceled and agents of the public electricity company EDF reduced the production of electricity, without causing power cuts.
At National Education, the ministry reported 7.67% of teachers on strike (against 14.17% on February 7) with two out of three areas on vacation.
The leaders of the eight main unions met to demonstrate in the city of Albi (south – 50,000 inhabitants), symbol of this France of medium-sized towns very mobilized against the reform.
“Holding the breath”
“The discontent, the determination and the combativeness are intact”, assured from Albi the secretary general of the reformist union CFDT, Laurent Berger.
“The idea today is not to make numbers, but to maintain the breath”, added its number two, Marylise Léon.
In these medium-sized towns, “the question of pensions is a bit of a straw that breaks the camel’s back”, in addition to the problems of purchasing power and the feeling of a decline in public services, affirmed de his side Philippe Martinez, his counterpart from the CGT union.
For their part, the deputies have been scrapping since February 6 in the National Assembly, where the government camp of Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has only a relative majority, on the examination of the text and where the opposition, in particular left, fights a battle of obstruction.
President Emmanuel Macron plays a significant part of his political credit on this pension reform, the flagship measure of his second five-year term and a symbol of his stated desire to reform France.
France is one of the European countries where the legal retirement age is the lowest, without the pension systems being completely comparable.
The government has chosen to extend working hours in response to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population.