Trade unions recently staged a third wave of countrywide strikes in France over President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals to extend the retirement age for French citizens. These strikes caused disruptions to public transportation, education, and refinery supplies.
Multi-sector walkouts are a test of Macron’s capacity to accomplish change without a working majority in the National Assembly and come the day after pension reform legislation began its rocky path through parliament. According to the government, people must continue working for two more years, perhaps until they turn 64. This concept is initiated and justified by giving the notion to keep the cost estimate of one of the most decent pension schemes in the industrialized world in the black.
According to surveys, the French spend the most years in the retirement of any OECD nation. Many people would be reluctant to give up this much-cherished privilege.
The individuals who criticized the decision of Macron.
Philippe Martinez of the hard left CGT and Laurent Berger of the centrist CFDT stood side by side to criticize the pension change at the beginning of a protest march in Paris. This reform will have an impact on many generations’ life. They noted that the people will escalate their protest with longer and tougher activities if the government persists in its intransigence.
Berger’s union, which often takes a more accommodative attitude, rejected government concessions like raising the lowest pensions. These apologies are only band-aid payoffs. The essence of this legislation, which raises the legal retirement age to 64, is incredibly unjust. The government ignoring the protest is a democratic mistake, he argued.
Recent statistics put light on the matter that more people were participating in strikes, but the regime will monitor street protests to see how potent popular resistance is still. At a demonstration in the Riviera city of Nice, retiree Bernard Chevalier asserted that workers are depleted and burnt out from their jobs and that retirement should be another prospect in life rather than a place to wait to pass away.
Teachers’ involvement in strikes decreased to 14% from 26% the prior week, but it increased to 30% among employees of state-run energy company EDF from 40%. Deliveries of refined oil products from Total Energies facilities were reportedly stopped. The amount of power produced decreased by around 4.3 gigawatts (GW), or about 6% of capacity.
The first cleaner in France to be elected to the legislature, Rachel Keke, addressed a heated discussion in parliament by saying, those people who favor this change don’t understand how challenging and demanding jobs are, what it’s like to wake in the dawn with an aching back. She continued by saying that one would not understand what it is like to require medication in order to complete a workday. Because it’s not the reality you know, you don’t comprehend, the communist politician said, drawing more cheers from the opposition benches.
The people in support.
Olivier Dussopt, the minister of labor, rejected the opposition’s claims that the government was downplaying the scope of the unrest and said that reform was required. The minister told RMC radio that the pension system is in the red and that it needs to be preserved if people care about the system.
The government estimates that the change will result in gross savings of further than 17 billion euros by 7 years down the lane. Associations and critics who lean left assert that workers must be protected and as such the money may come from some other sources, notably the wealthy.
The smell of politics in the proposed policies.
The conservative critics of Macron, whose support he needs for a majority that functions in the National Assembly, favor providing concessions for those who start their jobs young. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has suggested allowing certain workers to retire early. However, MPs in Les Republicains disagree on whether the proposed beginning age of 20 to 21 is low enough.
In addition to the French people’s loyalty to the present system, the Macron administration’s efforts to market the reforms have resulted in inconsistent arguments for the changes.
Macron first stated that he opposed increasing the amount of time that people must work, but he has now altered his mind. The administration then made an effort to justify the reforms by claiming that doing so would free up funds for other areas of the public sector, such as education, before switching to the argument that doing so is necessary to safeguard the pensions system.
Will protests make Macron reconsider his plans to alter French pensions?
The moment when Macron pushed through pension reforms and France experiences the massive industrial action it is famous for is the one that everyone saw coming.
France saw its largest strikes since 1968 during the winter of 2019–2020 when Macron last sought to alter the pension system. Covid quickly rendered the disruption archaic and forced Macron to abandon his objectives. But after pledging to reintroduce these measures and present them to parliament, Macron won reelection in April 2022. And the resistance now seems to be stronger than before: the CFDT, the largest and most moderate trade union in France, has joined the strike after previously choosing not to participate.
The reasons for opposition.
Most French people, according to several polls, are against Macron’s policies. 66 percent of respondents oppose extending the retirement age from 62 to 64, and 60 percent are against requiring 43 years of contributions before receiving a full pension. These two reforms’ primary tenets have poor support from the public.
A large portion of the public’s criticism stems from the steadfast notion that the French model must be upheld. The French public believes that this is the French model, the French exception, and they do not want to change it, therefore it is extremely difficult for the Macron government to get beyond that and explain that the retirement age is now higher everywhere else.
The last call.
Thus, the crucial question entails determining whether the mass of French citizens will back the unions across a whole protracted confrontation with Macron’s leadership. Whether the union members have the wherewithal to keep on striking during a lengthy stalemate and the influence of the strikes on legislative politics are the two other major determinants of who would prevail. Time will tell how this new retirement age policy will impact the French territory!
edited and proofread by nikita sharma
