STRIKE IN FRANCE STRIKE ARM BETWEEN UNIONS AND GOVERNMENT FOR PENSION REFORM

On the one hand, the various ministers, Elisabeth Borne in the lead, have multiplied public interventions in recent weeks to justify this reform as a budgetary imperative, while the seconds have repeated their opposition to any postponement of the age. retirement age, finally scheduled for 64 years by 2030.

Under these conditions, the calls for the “mobilization” of the employees became more and more insistent, with the first days of action being to be expected from the week of January 16th. What to expect from the coming social conflict?

A million protesters

Large processions took place Thursday throughout France to challenge the government's pension reform project while strongly followed strike calls disrupted public transport in particular. According to a police source, the million demonstrators in France will be exceeded

A police source said that the million demonstrators in France will be exceeded, while the official count of the authorities will be given at the end of the day this Thursday.

The CGT announces 400,000 demonstrators mobilized against the pension reform in Paris this Thursday. As a reminder, during the demonstration of December 5, 2019, the first day of mobilization against the previous reform, the union counted 250,000 people.

“Fair and responsible” reform

The President of the Republic was questioned from Spain this Thursday, January 19, 2023 on the January 19 strike against the pension reform. “It is a reform that was democratically presented during the presidential election and the legislative elections. It has been studied with the trade unions and has been validated by the government. It is a fair and responsible reform. France is a little out of step with other countries on the subject and if we want to be fair between the generations, we must carry out this reform”.

Emmanuel Macron had been questioned specifically on the question of a referendum after the announced success of the demonstrations on January 19. He did not answer this question, contenting himself with specifying that the “reform will be done”, in a “spirit of dialogue but with responsibility”.

The Head of State considered it "good and legitimate that all opinions can be expressed" but called for calm demonstrations. “I trust the organizers of these demonstrations so that this legitimate expression of disagreement can be done without creating too much inconvenience for all of our compatriots and obviously without overflow or violence or degradation”, he added.

A united trade union front

Over the years, recourse to strikes has thus tended to refocus on an increasingly small core of employees, in the public services or in certain industrial sectors, while it is reduced to the bare minimum in large fractions world of work, particularly in the service professions and in small and medium-sized enterprises. The last major interprofessional mobilization of the winter of 2019-2020, largely supported by public transport agents, highlighted this well. A resurgence of the wage dispute

Despite its weakening, trade unionism remains an essential player in social conflict. At least for the moment, the conflict that is opening up brings together – for the first time since 2010 – all the trade unions, already burned by the unemployment insurance reform and whose activists overwhelmingly reject any idea of extension of working time. For the first time in 12 years, therefore, the eight main unions called with one voice on the French to take to the streets.

Pensions and the issue of union repoliticization

Thus the pension reform places the trade unions on a crest line, enjoining them to take up a double challenge of magnitude. On the one hand, that of taking advantage of an exceptional unitary framework to build the broadest and most lasting mobilization possible, taking into account the fragmentation of the world of work and going beyond days of action without a future .

On the other, that of reinstating the refusal of reform, massive and inseparable among the opinion of a general opposition to government policy.