(Paris) Crucial week for pension reform. While the debates continue Monday in the Senate, with the adoption of a “CDI seniors” it is the vigil of arms for the opponents of Emmanuel Macron’s flagship project who want to put “France at a standstill Tuesday, or even beyond for some of them.
On the eve of a sixth day of action which promises to be massive against the reform and its postponement of the legal age of departure from 62 to 64, the French, still mostly hostile to the executive’s project, according to the polls, must prepare to live 24 hours of a country “at a standstill” as promised by the unions.
They want to do better than January 31, when the police had identified 1.27 million participants and the inter-union more than 2.5 million in the streets of France. The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has identified 265 gatherings.
“I call on the employees of this country, the citizens, the retirees to come and demonstrate massively”, said Monday the secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, who is asking that Emmanuel Macron finally react to the scale of the mobilization.
“The President of the Republic cannot remain deaf,” urged the Cedto leader. Solidaires predicts a “social tsunami”.
Between 1.1 and 1.4 million demonstrators are expected in France, including 60 and 90,000 in Paris with 300 to 500 radical elements and 400 to 800 yellow vests, a police source reported.
If the executive looks at what is being prepared in the street by urging opponents of “responsibility” such as the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt or his counterpart responsible for Public Accounts Gabriel Attal, he also has an eye on the Senate.
At the Luxembourg Palace, the examination of the text has resumed with now just under 3,000 amendments to the program by Sunday midnight.
“On the eve of a day of mobilization against this reform massively rejected by the population […] can we continue to debate as if nothing had happened? questioned Monday, Eliane Assassi, president of the majority communist CRCE group.
Against the opinion of the government, which fears “a windfall effect”, the right-wing majority voted for an amendment by the rapporteurs creating a new type of “end-of-career” permanent employment contract (CDI) to promote recruitment. employees aged 60 or over. With this “CDI seniors”, the employer would be exempt from family contributions.
The debates progressed step by step during the weekend with the abolition of special schemes for new entrants and the creation of a “senior index” in companies, but limited to those with more than 300 employees.
“We will do everything so that the reform can be adopted,” said the president of the LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, whose support for the reform is essential.
“We are nice today”
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne is due to speak Monday evening on France 5.
Very strong disruptions are planned in urban and rail transport, all the unions having called for a renewable strike at the RATP and the SNCF, from Tuesday. For the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, it will be “one of the most difficult days we have known”.
In energy, the unions opened the ball of mobilizations on Friday with production cuts in several nuclear power plants. The CGT promised “a black week”. On the fuel side, the CGT also called for a renewable strike in the refineries, with the aim of “blocking the entire economy”.
“When we say that we want to bring the French economy to its knees, it’s factories, it’s workers, it’s French people who work,” Gabriel Attal lashed out before the senators on Monday.
On the roads, filter dams took place this Monday morning near Lille or Rouen.
In education, the Snuipp-FSU, the leading union in schools, provides for more than 60% of strikers in kindergarten and elementary. High school student blockages are also expected even if the mobilization is struggling to take hold in the youth. Student and high school organizations met on the 9th to “strengthen the movement”.
Stopped construction sites, closed store curtains, open tolls and blocked roads are also part of the panoply of actions of opponents who will find the next day the opportunity to continue to be heard for International Women’s Rights Day.
