Public transport, classes and electricity, oil and gas supplies were disrupted across France on Tuesday in the third round of protests and strikes against government plans to reform pensions.
The demonstrations come a day after legislators began debating in parliament the bill that will raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 years.
It is the star measure of the second legislature of the president, Emmanuel Macron, who last week described it as “indispensable when compared to (other countries) in Europe”.
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Thousands of people demonstrated in the cities of Nice and Marseille, in the south of the country, while in the capital, Paris, a protest had been scheduled for the afternoon.
According to the authorities, 1.27 million people participated in last week’s protest, which was larger than the first, held on January 19.
The country’s eight main unions called for more demonstrations on Saturday.
The SNCF railway operator indicated that traffic was seriously disrupted on Tuesday throughout the country, including on the high-speed network.
International lines to Britain and Switzerland were also affected, as was the metro in the capital. Saad Kadiui, 37-year-old chief of staff at a consultancy in Paris, who had to go through a closed metro station, said that supported the strikes, although he described them as “annoying (…) There are other ways to protest against the pension reform”.
Kadiui supports the principle of the reform but wants parliament to improve the proposal. “I think for some positions, 64 (years) is too late”, he added.
The power company EDF pointed out that the protest movement caused a temporary reduction in electricity supply that did not cause blackouts.
More than half of the employees joined the strike at TotalEnergies refineries, the company said.
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The Ministry of Education indicated that about 13% of teachers did not attend to teach, less than last week.
A third of the French provinces had school holidays on Tuesday. Macron vowed to press ahead with the changes despite opinion polls showing growing opposition.
The regulations would gradually increase the minimum age to retire from the current 62 years to 64 in 2030 and would accelerate an already planned measure that establishes that one would have to be 43 years old to be entitled to a full pension, among other measures.
The debate in the National Assembly and the Senate is expected to last several weeks. The opposition submitted more than 20,000 amendments to the bill, most from the left-wing Nupes coalition.
Philippe Martinez, general secretary of the powerful CGT union, called on the government and legislators to “listen to the people”.
Speaking to French radio RT, he said Macron was “playing with fire”.
Macron wants to show that “can approve a reform, no matter what the public opinion is, what the citizens thinkMartinez said.
The head of the CFDT union, Laurent Berger, also urged the government to “hear” to the crowd that poured out into the street.
”Social tension can only be responded to through the democratic exercise of powerr”, he pointed out in statements to the French newspaper La Croix.
Fountain: Associated Press
Source: Gestion
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