Social plans, calls for strikes, budgetary austerity, the autumn promises to be tough on the social aspect in France. The unions of several sectors have launched calls for strikes and mobilization for the coming weeks to protest against social plans and against the consequences of a draft budget – still under discussion in Parliament – which provides for 60 billion euros in budgetary effort to redress public accounts in the red.
“Economic conditions are tightening significantly”recognized Labor Minister Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet in the Journal du Dimanche (JDD). A few days after the ads by Michelin of the closure in 2026 of its factories in Vannes and Cholet (1,254 jobs) and by Auchan of a draft social plan threatening 2,389 jobs in France, the minister mentions “an acceleration in the number of collective procedures opened by companies in difficulty. Added to it “its structural transformations in the automobile or mass distribution industries”.
“There will probably be announcements of site closures in the coming weeks and months,” had already warned Industry Minister Marc Ferracci on Saturday.
Serial strikes
After the vote by the deputies of a increased taxation on air transportthe national union of airline pilots (SNPL) told AFP on Sunday call on all employees in the airline sector to stop working and to demonstrate on Thursday in front of the National Assembly.
The unions of the SNCF railway company are calling on them to stop work on Thursday, November 21and also launched on Saturday a notice of indefinite strike from Wednesday December 11 7:00 p.m. (renewable for 24-hour periods), one social movement which risks disrupting service during the Christmas holidays. Representatives of railway workers are calling for a moratorium on the dismantling of Fret SNCF, the division dedicated to rail freight, and are protesting against the terms of opening regional lines to competition.
“The dialogue must succeed” between the leaders of the SNCF and the unions of the public company, judged the Minister of Transport, François Durovray on Sunday. “Everyone is responsible”, “we cannot imagine that at the moment when France must move forward, it will be blocked and that at the moment when the French want to find themselves again, they will not be able to do so”he said on franceinfo. This railway strike would be **“come on” et “incomprehensible” for hundreds of thousands of travelers who “have nothing to do” with freight and “are counting on the train for these end-of-year holidays”, added the vice-president of the National Federation of Transport Users (Fnaut), Michel Quidort.
In the Civil Service also, two of the main unions, FO and the CGT, called for a “strike” on Thursday after the failure of a meeting with Minister Guillaume Kasbarian, raising the hypothesis of mobilizations in early December.
Four unions representing medical biologists finally called on Health Insurance on Thursday to reopen negotiations on their rates, recently revised downwards, otherwise threatening a “shutdown”i.e. the closure of medical analysis laboratories from December 23 to 31 inclusive.
Et the CGT called for December 12 has “mobilizations for employment in all regions”. “We are at the start of a violent industrial bloodletting”, estimates its general secretary Sophie Binet, in La Tribune Dimanche. “It is estimated that more than 150,000 jobs will disappear, probably more,” according to Ms. Binet who predicts a “domino effect” on the subcontractors of “major contractors”.
Farmers will increase their actions
On the side of the farmersanger is brewing again, less than a year after a movement which partly paralyzed the main roads in France. Symbolic actions have resumed in recent weeks and should increase after mid-Novembernotably at the call of the majority unions FNSEA and Young Farmers (JA).
Farmers, hit hard this year by poor wheat harvests and a renewed health crisis on livestock farms, are demanding to be able to make a living from their profession: they are waiting for clarity on loans guaranteed by the State. And they categorically refuse the signing of a free trade agreement negotiated between the EU and Latin American countries, Mercosur.
Related News :