France begins an important week on Monday in the struggle over the unpopular pension reform, a crucial move for centrist President Emmanuel Macron that unions are determined to stop.
On January 10, Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne confirmed the news: the government wants the retirement age to be raised from 62 to 64 by 2030 and the contribution period for a full pension from 42 to 43 by 2027.
Since then, the tension has been growing. On January 31, more than 1.27 million people — double according to the unions — participated in the largest protests against social reform in three decades.
And, when the project faces the first litmus test in Parliament starting Monday, the union front intensifies the pressure with two new protests: Tuesday and Saturday.
The circulation of trains will be back "strongly disturbed" on Tuesday according to the state railway company SNCF.
Barely one out of every two high-speed trains and 3 out of 10 regional trains will circulate, he said.
In Paris, the capital, the metro and regional trains will also see their frequency reduced.
The leader of the CFDT union, Laurent Berger, called this Sunday to participate in both, although he recognized the difficulty of going on strike again on Tuesday, since the workers lose the corresponding salary.
But "On Saturday the 11th, the challenge is for people to take to the streets, for there to be a popular, massive movement"Berger added in statements to France Inter radio.
Berger noted that it would be a "democratic mistake" not to listen to the majority rejection of the French.
parliamentary countdown
The Assembly (lower house) begins on Monday the debate in full reform that seeks to alleviate a deficit in the pension fund of 13,500 million euros (14,600 million dollars) in 2030, according to the government.
"our system [de reparto] is threatened"Borne reiterated in the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, hoping to achieve a parliamentary majority thanks to Los Republicanos (LR, right), in the face of rejection from the extreme right and the left.
The government now does not rule out setting the retirement age at 63 for those who started working at 20-21 years of age, a concession to that opposition party that increases its demands as popular pressure intensifies.
But LR votes might not be necessary. The government chose a procedure that limits the days of debate and that, together with the 20,000 amendments presented, above all by the left, make it almost impossible to get to vote.
The deputies must pronounce themselves before February 17, when the reform goes to the Senate. If by March 26, both houses of Parliament have not voted, the government can adopt it by ordinance.
This decision could increase the authoritarian image of Macron, 45, who remains in the background and left Borne and his labor minister, Olivier Dussopt, in charge.
"Post-pandemic labor dispute"
Charged with defending the reform in Parliament, Dussopt is weakened at a key moment, since the court confirmed this week his imputation for "favoritism" when he was mayor of Annonay (south-east).
Privately, Macron’s allies expect speedy adoption of an unpopular bill that ends one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe, and grudging acceptance, at the expense of the duration of the mobilization.
Since coming to power in 2017, the president has faced major social protest –"yellow vests"– and strong opposition to his first attempt to reform pensions, which the pandemic forced him to put on hold.
And now, "not only the opposition to the reform is very majority [dos de cada tres franceses, según los sondeos NDLR]but increases"said political scientist Bruno Cautrès on France 5.
For the expert, Macron seeks to project himself in the post-reform period with measures "social" focused on professional training, the remuneration of civil servants and the "new relationship with work" to calm things down.
But, for the leader of the CDFT, the vision of the government "I do not change" despite the fact that the population is increasingly questioning the life-work relationship since covid-19. The rejection of the current reform is "a post-pandemic labor dispute"he warned.