Numerous demonstrators across France, electricity production at half mast, very disrupted transport on the rail network and in Paris, closed schools: France is plunged Thursday into a day of massive strike against a decried pension reform, a political test for President Emmanuel Macron in a tense economic and social context.
The project and its flagship measure, the postponement of the retirement age to 64, against 62 today, is coming up against a united trade union front and widespread hostility in public opinion according to the polls.
“We are on our knees”, loose Florence Trintignac, 54, health executive met among thousands of demonstrators in Clermont-Ferrand, in the center of France. For her, “this reform is the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Protesters pounded the pavement Thursday morning in several French cities, before the Parisian procession set off around 2 p.m. local time, to say “no” to raising the legal retirement age.
The first figures reported by the authorities attest to a major mobilization: at least 30,000 people marched in Toulouse (south-west), 26,000 in Marseille (south-east), 15,000 in Montpellier (south-east), 14 000 in Tours (centre), 13,600 in Pau (south-west), 12,000 in Perpignan (south) and Orléans (centre)…
The mobilization “is beyond what we thought”, welcomed the number one of the CFDT union, Laurent Berger, at the start of the Paris demonstration.
The pension reform “channels all the discontent” in France, estimated on the Public Senate channel the secretary general of the CGT union Philippe Martinez.
A rejection of this reform expressed vehemently by Manon Marc, a school facilitator interviewed in Paris: “I find that we are making fun of our faces. They don’t know what it’s like to work until the age of 64 under these conditions”.
Anticipating a “galley Thursday”, the Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, had called for postponing travel or teleworking, a practice which has spread widely in France since confinement to stem COVID in 2020.
Political test for Macron
The agents of the public electricity company EDF have cut electricity production, reaching at least the equivalent of twice the consumption of Paris.
On the side of the refineries, the CGT TotalEnergies had between 70 and 100% of strikers, on most of the group’s sites.
The strike was very popular in transport with almost no regional trains, few high-speed trains (TGV), a slow-moving metro in Paris and a very underserved large suburb.
Civil aviation has asked airlines to cancel Thursday one in five flights at Paris-Orly airport, due to a strike by air traffic controllers.
Many public services are the subject of strike calls, in particular education, where the main union, the FSU, counts 70% of striking teachers in schools and 65% in colleges and high schools.
Emmanuel Macron, whose pension reform is a crucial project of the second five-year term, for which he had committed himself from the campaign for his first term, plays big: his party, which does not have a majority in the National Assembly , could be weakened if the movement were deep and lasting.
This political test for the president – who stays out of the fray and sends Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to the front line – comes in a tense economic and social context.
The French are suffering the effects of high inflation, at 5.2% on average in 2022, in a country which was shaken during Emmanuel Macron’s first term by the demonstrations of “Yellow Vests” against high prices.
For the leader of Force Ouvrière, Frédéric Souillot “we left for a hard conflict” and “we must block the economy”.
Although their modes of action diverge, the eight main unions are presenting a united front that has not been seen for 12 years.
The left and the extreme right are also opposed to the reform. Only the classic right-wing opposition seems open to compromise.
France is one of the European countries where the legal retirement age is the lowest, without the pension systems being completely comparable. It is set at 65 in Germany, Belgium or Spain, and 67 in Denmark, according to the Center for European and International Social Security Liaison, a French public body.
The government has chosen to extend working hours in response to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population. He defends his project by presenting it as a “conveyor of social progress” in particular by upgrading small pensions.