Trains stand still, schools closed, unions on the streets. France is preparing for a massive day of strikes against a pension reform on Thursday, paying a political tribute to President Emmanuel Macron. His government is calling for a “blockade” of the country to be avoided.
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The project and its flagship measure, pushing the retirement age to 64 instead of the current 62, are met with a united front of the trade unions and widespread opposition in public opinion, according to surveys.
“It’s going to be a tough Thursday (…), major disruptions to traffic,” warned Minister Delegated for Transport Clément Beaune, calling for travel or teleworking to be postponed.
The national company SNCF ensures “very heavily disrupted” traffic with every third, depending on the line even every fifth high-speed train (TGV) and on average hardly every tenth regional train.
Traffic in the metro will also be greatly reduced in Paris, said the transport authority RATP.
While some petrol stations are already dry, Mr Beaune urged motorists not to “take precautionary measures” for fear of bottlenecks from possible work stoppages at refineries.
Civil aviation, for its part, called on airlines to cancel one in five flights at Paris-Orly airport on Thursday because of an air traffic controllers’ strike.
In education, 70% of primary school teachers will not teach and many schools will be closed according to their main union, and strikes are also planned in the electricity sector.
Many French people who have the opportunity and are not on strike should resort to teleworking. “Tomorrow I will be teleworking, I will stay at home and wait for it to be over,” said Aurélie Lenoir, 36, a start-up leader.
flagship reform
Emmanuel Macron, whose pension reform is a crucial project of the second five-year term he committed to from campaigning for his first term, is playing big: his party, which does not have a majority in the National Assembly, could be weakened if the movement was deep and lasting.
While the French President on Wednesday pointed the finger at certain unions keen to “block the country”, government spokesman Olivier Véran said he hoped on the same lexical field that “popular statements will not become a blockade”. Unions, united for the first time in 12 years, are tending to lose ground in the French social landscape.
The left and the extreme right are against the reform. Only the classic right-wing opposition seems willing to compromise.
“The trophy is full,” said Olivier Mateu, a union representative from the south of France, in an interview with AFP in Marseille. “We have seen that everything the government has done has been in favor of the richest in this country and never against those who create the wealth, which is us workers. »
Rallies are expected in 215 to 250 cities, according to sources hoping to mobilize more than “a million” demonstrators. This symbolic scale would help the movement to be long-lived.
More than 10,000 police and gendarmes, including 3,500 in Paris, are being mobilized to secure the demonstrations, according to the Interior Ministry, which is expecting “a few thousand” demonstrators “who could be violent” in the capital.
France is one of the European countries with the lowest statutory retirement age, although pension systems are not fully comparable. In Germany, Belgium or Spain there are 65, in Denmark 67, according to the Center for European and International Social Security Liaison, a French public body.
In response to the financial deterioration of pension funds and the aging of the population, the government has decided to increase working hours. He defends his project by presenting it as a “facilitator of social progress”, particularly through the valorization of small pensions.