For two weeks, the executive has been late on the strike which caused fuel shortages, minimized the impact of the movement, then announced its imminent end too quickly. It is now urgent for the government to act to avoid a coagulation of strikes. He fears that wage demands will spread and that, beyond the interprofessional day of Tuesday, October 18, a renewable movement will start in transport or in other public services.
However, accelerating the return to normal in the refineries, this undoubtedly involves an increase in the requisitioning of personnel, a tool which it has only used very marginally until then. This is what Elisabeth Borne on TF1 cautiously suggested on Sunday, October 18, stressing that majority agreements were signed at Esso and Total.
But resorting to the strong way could serve as fuel for the social movement. This is the trap in which the executive finds itself. On the one hand, he has a trembling arm when requisitioning the personnel essential to restarting the refineries or drawing out article 49-3 to have the 2023 budget validated in the Assembly. On the other hand, it is the very authority of Emmanuel Macron which is weakened every day by fuel shortages or by the repeated outvoting of Renaissance deputies at the Palais-Bourbon.
For Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Head of State is even “breathless”. This is what the founder of La France Insoumise said on Sunday, October 16, on the sidelines of his march “against the high cost of living and climate inaction” which brought together 29,500 people, according to the cabinet Occurrence.
>> On the march against the high cost of living, ecological and social demands to denounce “the same exploitation of the planet and of human beings”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself is looking for a second wind and this is the reason why he unearthed a new piece of glorious history of the left: after 1789, he promised on Sunday to build a “new Popular Front”. In passing, he called for a “general strike”, like a union leader. For the moment, Philippe Martinez, the secretary general of the CGT, is careful not to do the same, measuring the risk of launching this type of slogan… if they are not followed by effects on the ground.