“Emmanuel Macronend your retirement, not ours!” read a handpainted sign at a recent protest march France. “Subway, work, grave,” said another in a more existential tone. O Government of President Emmanuel Macron faced strikes in February to protest his plan Raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64.
Two earlier strikes in January nationwide, more than a million people took to the streets. All unions in France support more industry actions. Most opposition parties and most French people are firmly opposed to reforming the pension system.
The law, which was tabled in Parliament on February 6, not only divided the country but also sparked debate among deaf people. The reform is “essential” for the pension system to balance its books and France to receive its generous pensions, the government says, at a time when people are on average living about a decade longer than they were in 1980. Opponents accuse the government of brutal cutbacks acquired rights in a modern welfare state.
So far, Macron’s centrist government has failed to convince the French that raising the minimum retirement age is either necessary or a fair way to limit an annual pension gap that will reach 14 billion euros ($15.2 billion) in 2030. Critics of Nupes, a leftwing opposition alliance, claim it would be fairer to tax “superprofits” or the rich. A 2% tax on the wealth of French billionaires, according to a report by France’s Oxfam institute, would wipe out the pension deficit overnight although billionaires may have different ideas about their mobile money. Rightwing Republicans, who raised the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 in a previous incarnation, now have the gall to call Macron’s version unfair.
Demonstrators carry a placard of Emmanuel Macron during a protest against pension reforms in Toulouse, southern France. Photo: Guillaume Horcajuelo/ EFE
However, by focusing strictly on the retirement age, the government also hides the fact that it is only about accounting. It’s part of a broader attempt by Macron to put work at the heart of his secondterm project. “Pension reform,” says Marc Ferracci, labor economist and Macron’s center party MP, “is central to the campaign goal of achieving full employment and increasing employment for older workers.” Full employment would mean raising the unemployment rate from the current 7% around 5%, a level not seen since 1979
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France’s employment rate for 5564 year olds, which rose 5 points during Macron’s tenure, remains well below Germany’s 72%.
To achieve this goal, the government intends to introduce a mandatory “senior citizen quota” to monitor the proportion of older workers on the payroll and discourage companies from laying off gray workers. For young people, the number of internships is increasing, reaching 980,000 in 2022, the highest level ever recorded. At the same time, the government tightened the rules for economic benefits that apply in times of economic growth and labor shortages. Many companies in France are currently reporting problems in filling vacancies.
French police arrest protesters during a general strike in Paris. Photo: Benoit Tessier/Portal
Such a project makes sense for France. The difficulty is that since the pandemic, many societies have begun to rethink the nature of work. And in the French way of thinking, progress towards a better society is measured by reducing the workload. In 1880, socialist thinker Paul Lafargue published Le Droit à la Paresse (“The Right to Be Lazy”), in which he advocated a threehour day and denounced the “madness of the passion for work.” Two decades ago, “Bonjour Paresse” (“Good Morning, Sloth!”), a guide to doing nothing in the workplace, became a bestseller.
The reduction of working hours, originally intended to protect workers from abuse, became part of France’s postwar history. In 1982, François Mitterrand lowered the minimum retirement age from 65 to 60. Two decades later, France introduced the 35hour week. The proportion of French people who consider work “very important” has fallen from 60% in 1990 to just 24% in 2021, according to the research institute Ifop. The pandemic has accelerated this change, says Romain Bendavid in an article for the Fondation JeanJaurès, a think tank. By 2022, only 40% of French people said they would rather earn more and have less free time, down from 63% in 2008.
A demonstrator lights a torch during a protest in Toulouse. Photo: Guillaume Horcajuelo/ EFE
When French politicians talk about all this, the main focus of the discussion is exchanging insults and spreading slogans. Sandrine Rousseau, the Green leader of the Nupes coalition, openly advocates the “right to be lazy” and wants a 32hour week. Macron’s interior minister Gérald Darmanin has criticized Nupes as a group of “people who don’t like to work” and believe they can live in an “easeless society”.
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In reality, French society is more complex than this war of words suggests. Thanks to more lenient rules, French workers now have, on average, a longer work week (37 hours) than German workers (35 hours) and are almost as productive per hour worked. Even within Nupes, some politicians, including Fabien Roussel, leader of the Communist Party, embody the value of work.
The French may say work is no longer the focus of their lives, but a new study by the Institut Montaigne, a think tank, shows that three quarters of them also say they are very happy at work, a number that has remained stable for several years. .
Madame la Première Ministre, pensezvous Sincerement qu’il est bon pour le pays de offerr une réforme des retraites en vue de decaler l’âge de départ, à laquelle 70% des Français sont opposés, en leur faisant payer les échecs de vos Politics? pic.twitter.com/MJ0ixzFLdq
—Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) January 10, 2023
However, France is not getting involved in this debate and public opinion has hardened against the pension reform: 64% are against today, up 3 points since January. Macron, says a source close to him, is determined to assert himself.
If the President does not get the necessary votes in Parliament, where he no longer has a majority, reform can be carried out through a special constitutional provision, but with the risk of triggering new general elections. But even if he manages to pass his law, if Macron fails to convince the French of his merits, he could tie his name to successful reform, but in a bitterly angry country. / TRANSLATION BY AUGUSTO CALIL