First assault against retirement reform of Emmanuel Macron. The eight unions mobilized massively this Thursday. More of two million people marched in the 220 demonstrations, according to the union CGT. In Paris, the attendance forced the procession to unfold, which, according to the same source, exceeded 400,000 people. The Government reduces participation to 1,120,000 protesters, 80,000 in the capital.
The protest included strikes in key sectors of services public where unions are deeply rooted. And whose employees will be affected by the suppression of their special retirement regimes. Thus, in the Parisian transports (RATP) the traffic was very altered. At SNCF -the French Renfe- 46% of its employees missed work. At Total’s refineries, unemployment exceeded 70%.
However, the strike was not widespread, neither in the public education (between 65 and 80% according to the unions, between 34 and 42% according to the ministry) or among State officials where 30% of their 2.5 million did not show up for work.
Surely that has incited the union centrals when deciding the continuity of the movement. The next national day of demonstrations has been set for January 31, when the hardest core intended to summon the next week. Between now and then, the unions will undoubtedly schedule new strikes in the strategic sectors where the radicals are very powerful. But the union strategy seems to want to hold the pulse of the Government with days of large demonstrations without exhausting the workers with a six-week strike like in 2019.
Macron’s reform
Faced with pressure from the street, the firmness of the Government: Macron said this Thursday that His reform is “fair and responsible” and to carry it out with “respect and a spirit of dialogue but also with determination and responsibility.” The president spoke in Barcelona where he participated in the Spanish-French summit.
Macron and several ministers played at being exquisite. “It is good and legitimate that all opinions can be expressed,” said the president. He knows that if he has the political legitimacy to carry out his reform, the unions have the support of the street and public opinion, since all the polls point to the majority opposition to working beyond 62 years of age.
It is necessary to emphasize the absence of incidents in the demonstrations. The exception occurred in Pariswhere some jumps of the black pad ultra-left groups that caused destruction before being neutralized by the mobile brigades of the police.
great mobilization
Thursday’s day should be compared with that of December 5, 2019, when between a million and a half people demonstrated, according to the union count and 806,000, according to the Interior. Yesterday the unions demonstrated a greater mobilization capacity. To find similar figures, you have to go back to December 1995. The prime minister at the time, Alain juppé, had to abandon his project to end the special regimes after a month of strike. No one tried again to reform the privilege system until Macron.
In 2019, the reform was not intended to delay the retirement age but to end the 42 special regimes. The union response resulted in weekly demonstrations and a strike that left France without trains and Paris without a metro from December 3 until well into 2020. The SNCF (the French Renfe) lost 801 million euros in 2019, of which the strike in December accounted for 614. The conflict cost Parisian public transport (RATP) some 200 million, according to calculations by Them echoes.
Despite this strong opposition from the streets, the government headed by edouard Philippe got the Assembly National approved the project… and then the Covid pandemic arrived. And Macron preferred to abandon his reform without completing the parliamentary process.
Retirement age
From then to now, the reform, which will be approved by the Council of Ministers on January 23, has evolved. This time yes changes the legal retirement age which will increase from the current 62 years to 64 in 2030, at a rate of three months per year. To achieve the full pension it will be necessary to have contributed 43 annuities. This was already planned from the law Touraine, from the name of the socialist minister who signed the 2014 project. But the current Executive accelerates the process: it had to be completed in 2035; now, it will be in 2027.
The Government resumes from the 2019 project the merger into the general scheme of the “main” special schemes and their particular retirement conditions which, according to the government “are no longer justified in the eyes of the French (…) nor are they adapted to the reality”. This will be the case of transport in the capital (RATP) where bus drivers retire several years before their colleagues in other cities; from the public electricity (EDF) and gas (GDF) group; of Bank of France; of the Economic and Social Council and of the employees of the notary offices.
they save their regimes self employed the lawyers, the sailors as well as the artists of the comedy French and the Opera of Pariswhose statutes are prior to the Revolution French and they have survived all the political changes since the monarchy. In 2019, the Government included the employees of these two institutions who responded by joining the strike, which forced the suspension of 70 shows with a loss of income of 15 million.
The objective of the reform is to bring “the system to equilibrium in 2030” avoiding that “the deficits add up to 150,000 million euros” if the current status quo is maintained, said the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, when presenting the government project. “Each euro counts for a State that has a debt of three trillion euros,” stressed the Finance Minister, Bruno You Maire.
The system’s savings will be used to finance the revaluation of the lowest pensions up to 1,200 euros gross per month. They will also cover the cost of letting those who started working between 18 and 20 years of age retire at age 62, as well as those affected by disability.
Politically, the main difference is that Macron had raised the retirement age in his re-election program, while in 2017 this was not the case. Yesterday, in Barcelona, Macron recalled that “things have to be said when democratic decisions are made”, that he “clearly” presented his project, which was “validated” in the presidential and legislative elections last summer.
In fact, Macron’s program delayed retirement until age 65. The reduction up to 64 years is a concession to The Republicans (classical right) whose votes are necessary because, contrary to the previous legislature, the Government not has of most absolute in the Assembly. Although distrust of Macron abounds among right-wing deputies, it seems difficult for them not to support a reform that they have been demanding notoriously in the Senate, where they have a majority, and that was included in the program of their candidate for the presidency of the Republic, Valerie Pécresse.
Macron’s argument –“I was on my show and I was re-elected”– is answered by him Laurent Berger, leader of the majority and moderate CFDT union, the only one who asked for the vote for Macron. The day after the victory at the polls, Berger asked in a gallery in You world Macron to listen to those who “voted for him” but “do not share his program.”
In addition to the street, the Government has the rest of the forces of the National Assembly against it. Not only the leftist coalition (unsubmissive, communists, socialists Y ecologists) but also the extreme right of Marine You Pen.
“I think the government has already lost a battle, that of convincing the people,” he declared. Jean-Luc Mélenchonleader of the Insumisos, in the demonstration of Marseilles. “This reform does not make sense and Emmanuel Macron will not last,” she predicted.
