(Paris) Faced with the government’s inflexibility on pension reform and the President of the Republic’s door remaining closed, the unions have no choice but to intensify strikes and demonstrations, a few days before the end of the parliamentary debate.
On the evening of a “historic” day of mobilization on Tuesday, which brought together more demonstrators than on January 31, the inter-union had announced its intention to write to the President of the Republic to ask him for a meeting.
She walked the talk on Thursday, saying the political “lack of response” to the ongoing “powerful social movement” was “a serious democratic problem” that could lead to an “explosive” situation.
But the executive has already rejected the request of the unions to be received at the Elysee Palace, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne sending them back to the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, on Wednesday.
And on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, the Senate adopted article 7 of the bill, which provides for the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
“We no longer have a choice”, reacted the Solidaires union in a press release, calling for “maintain and expand the renewable strike movements” and to “demonstrate even more massively” on Saturday March 11 and Wednesday March 15, the day when senators and deputies could agree in a joint committee (CMP) on a common text, opening the way to a vote in both chambers from the 16th.
“When we are not listened to, we accelerate, we change methods”, explained Tuesday evening on BFMTV the secretary general of the CGT, Philippe Martinez. “We are going to amplify the strikes until we obtain satisfaction”, echoed him on Wednesday evening Sophie Binet, general secretary of the Ugict-CGT (executives).
“Rights in our boots”
Several sectors have been engaged in renewable strikes for a few days: rail and air transport, energy, refineries… On Wednesday, the CGT Energy cut off the power to the Stade de France and the Olympic village site, a highly symbolic action.
“Faced with a government straight in its boots, we are also straight in our boots,” explained the general secretary of the union, Sébastien Menesplier.
Same determination displayed on the side of the refiners: “The government must open the door, because there, we are going to go into something which will be radicalized and which is not going to be great”, Adrien Vaugrenard told AFP on Wednesday. , CFDT union delegate at the Donges refinery (Loire-Atlantique).
However, we are far from the general strike. The renewable strike remains confined to certain emblematic sectors, bastions of the CGT, and has not taken in National Education, for example. “It’s complicated for colleagues to go on renewable strike”, recognized in Toulouse Annick Camalet (FO education).
The movement also remains timid in high schools and universities, of which only a small number were closed Thursday, at the call of youth organizations.
Even in transport, the mobilization is mixed, well followed at the SNCF, less at the RATP. “In the metro, drivers are waiting to see if France moves,” Jean-Christophe Delprat, RATP manager at FO-Transports, told AFP on Wednesday.
The employees of the SNCF and the RATP do not want to be the locomotive of a strike “by proxy”, but it is clear, to the great displeasure of Daniel Teirlynk, union delegate Unsa-Ferroviaire, that “it is not the general strike that we had been told”.
Secretary General of the CFDT, Laurent Berger has been careful since the beginning of the protest to call for a renewable strike, relying instead on major days of mobilization, likely according to him to influence the vote of parliamentarians.
“We have to keep public opinion with us and act with parliamentarians. And that we continue to make big mobilizations on Saturday and the day of the CMP, which will help to convince some of them of the massive rejection of this reform, ”he told AFP.