The CGT, FSU and Solidaires called a strike this Tuesday, October 1. Trade union organizations have called for the repeal of the pension reform and an increase in salaries and pensions.
More than 180 protests were planned across the country. In the streets, around 170,000 people (according to the CGT), fewer than during the last mobilization on wages in October 2023. “It is a mobilization worthy of days of action of this type”, nuanced the secretary general of the CGT Sophie Binet. Also concerned “to see in the workplace a great democratic and social fatigue among employees”.
This Tuesday morning, for example, several hundred people took to the streets in Lorient. Among them, Rozenn, CGT activist at the Lorient arsenal. From Michel Barnier’s general policy speech, she wishes “a speech that listens to the ballot boxesa left-wing speech since they were the ones who were elected in the legislative elections.”
She hopes that the Prime Minister “assumes” this reality “even if the entire government is on the right and very, very right”. Also nourishing the hope at the RTL microphone of a “dignified retirement but New Popular Front version not RN”. Rozenn, an asbestos worker, will “normally retire at 58 and a half”, “hoping not to die before”.
Barnier puts unions back in the game
This Tuesday afternoon, in the hemicycle, Michel Barnier said he wanted to “resume dialogue” and “promote exchanges with social partners”. Words which were not enough to reassure in the Parisian procession where the CGT counted 20,000 people.
Smaïn and Joachim, behind a Solidaires union banner, no longer believe in this social dialogue at all. “We’re going back to the table and listening to the unions. He’s not here for that” but for “drawing the road map of liberalism”explained the first at the microphone of RTL. The second: “What we observed with Macron is that you have the right to demonstrate. Do your thing in your sandbox, we will continue to do as we planned.”
The Prime Minister wanted to give guarantees such as adjusting the pension reform, for example. So review the arduousness criteria. Categorical, Francine does not believe in this dialogue. “He will be forced to make adjustments at the margins. Wearing jobs, things like that, it’s very good. But he will not change the pension reform.“And to continue: “What we wanted was the abolition of this retirement at 64 years old to return at least to 62 years old. But he won’t.”
A consultation of the social partners is not synonymous with a repeal of the pension reform or an abandonment of the unemployment insurance reform. It only means consulting and adjusting at the margins…
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