Tag: Strike

For his tenth protest in under three months, 69-year-old Patrick opted for a striped prisoner’s costume complete with ball and chain – and a cap reading, “Emmanuel Macron, je t’emmerde (screw you)”.

“At the last protest I wore a blue worker’s overall, but I felt I needed to raise my game,” said the former municipal worker. “In fact we all need to raise our game – it’s the only way we can stop the government.”

Like many others in this sleepy town of under 15,000, Patrick said protests against the government’s planned pension overhaul would need to “harden” to have any chance of succeeding.

“Free yourselves from your shackles, workers of France,” he shouted through a megaphone, leading a crowd of around 2,000 protesters on a good-humoured march through Montargis – flatteringly dubbed the “Venice of the Gâtinais” owing to its river and canal.

“16-64 is a beer, not a career,” Patrick added in a pun on France’s best-known brew, echoing a slogan that has become popular with opponents of Macron’s plan to raise the country’s minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 – which polls say a large majority of the French oppose.

Nestled in a rural region roughly 120 kilometres south of Paris, Montargis has witnessed its biggest rallies in living memory since the start of an increasingly bitter battle over pension reform, with the number of protesters peaking at around 4,000 – equivalent to almost a third of the local population – on March 7.

Though turnout ebbed in subsequent protests, it surged again last week after Macron’s government used special executive powers to ram the reform through parliament without a vote, further enraging its opponents.

Read more: A dog day afternoon in French politics as Macron uses ‘nuclear option’ to raise retirement age

“The move brought many new protesters to the movement, particularly among the young, who recognised a threat to democracy in the use of article 49.3,” said Annaby Diaw, the local head of the Force Ouvrière union, referring to an article in the French constitution that allowed the government to bypass parliament.

“The government’s move has mobilised people we’d never seen before,” added Anne Pascaud, a deputy mayor of neighbouring Châlette-sur-Loing, wrapped in the tricolour sash typically worn by elected officials during public events. She described the rallies against pension reform as a “new phenomenon” in a region unaccustomed to street protests.

‘Not just about pensions’

The high turnout in smaller towns and cities has been a striking feature of France’s biggest protest movement in several decades. While national and international media tend to focus on the mass marches staged in Paris, turnout has often been higher – proportionally – in other parts of the country.

In places like Morlaix (Brittany), Rodez (Aveyron) or Guéret (Creuse), protests have regularly gathered the equivalent of more than a quarter of the local population. In Annonay, the hometown of Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt, the reform’s chief sponsor, some marches rallied as much as half the local population of 16,000, with protesters focusing their fury on the former Socialist who served as the town’s mayor for close to a decade.

In the northern village of Bouquehault, population 750, a large crowd rallied last Thursday during the ninth day of nationwide protests, marching behind a banner that read “Denial of democracy = Rural fightback”.

The level of grassroots opposition to the reform explains why some conservative lawmakers from rural constituencies chose to support a no-confidence motion that narrowly failed to topple Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne’s government on March 20, in defiance of their party’s leadership.

Analysts have noted that smaller cities tend to have a high proportion of civil servants, blue-collar workers and employees – all categories that are over-represented in the protest movement. Other factors of discontent include poverty, job insecurity and the dearth of public services in rural areas.

“People here feel abandoned by the state, which is pulling resources and services out of rural areas,” said Pascaud, the deputy mayor. Montargis ranks among the poorest municipalities in France, she noted, with a third of the population living on less than 1,000 euros a month – well short of the minimum wage.

“Macron boasts about unemployment figures going down, but the truth is more and more people live on low-paid and insecure jobs – particularly women,” said 60-year-old Christine, rallying in Montargis with several colleagues from a nearby distribution centre run by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi.

“It’s not just about pensions,” added Myriam, sporting a vest from the CGT trade union. “There’s nothing left where I live. I have to drive more than 20 kilometres to find anything, be it a job, petrol, grocery or a post office.”

Christine and her colleagues started working at 18 or shortly after, though career interruptions due to childcare mean many still have several years to go before qualifying for a full pension.

Macron’s government argues that raising the retirement age and stiffening the requirements for a full pension are required to balance the pension system amid shifting demographics. But unions say the proposed measures are unfair and will disproportionately affect low-skilled workers who start their careers early, as well as women.

Talk of the pension reform’s gender imbalance has gained particular traction, not least since one of Macron’s own ministers admitted in January that it would “leave women a little penalised” – in one of several PR blunders that have marred the government’s attempts to promote its increasingly unpopular plan.

“I was looking forward to retiring in two years’ time and now the government wants me to go on for two more years,” Christine said. “I can’t take any more; I’m beyond exhausted.”

Ghosts of the Yellow Vests

As the crowd turned a corner, Christine pointed to the spot where local residents hurled a foam pie at Macron’s former education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, during a campaign stop ahead of parliamentary elections last year.

The incident was symbolic of widespread disenchantment with the president’s ruling party in the Loiret département (county) around Montargis, where Blanquer was swatted aside in the first round of voting on June 12. The local constituency now has an MP from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally – traditionally the chief beneficiary of voters’ discontent.

During Macron’s first term in office, Montargis became a bastion of the Yellow Vest insurgency, which began as a protest movement against an unpopular fuel tax and quickly snowballed into an uprising against economic hardship, inequality and a discredited political establishment. The Gilets jaunes converged on the town’s rond-point cacahuète, a peanut-shaped roundabout that protesters held night and day for two months starting in November 2018.

The recent surge in violent clashes triggered by the government’s use of article 49.3 has stoked fears of a revival of Yellow Vest-styled unrest in the coming weeks – a prospect 49-year-old cleaner Karine is looking forward to.

“People used to be fighters here, but Covid-19 sent everyone to sleep,” she said, noting that the pandemic put a lid on the last of the Yellow Vest protests.

Holding a black-and-white flag, Karine described herself as a “non-violent anarchist – for now”. She said she had started occupying the cacahuète roundabout again, though only “a handful” of protesters had joined her.

“People are content with cushy little marches then go home for lunch,” she said. “It’s not enough. We need to smash everything up.”

Karine was among several demonstrators who lamented the government’s “refusal” to acknowledge the pénibilité (hardship) endured by low-income workers who perform physically-draining tasks. Macron has in the past said he was “not a fan” of the word pénibilité, “because it suggests that work is a pain”.

“Carrying and looking after toddlers all day long is exhausting, both physically and emotionally,” said Elsa, 21, a nursery worker who got her first job aged 16. “I can’t imagine doing this for the next 40 years.” Her colleague Belinda held up a banner that read, “We change babies’ nappies at the nursery; who will change ours at 64?”

Pushing back the retirement age makes no sense when companies already start pushing workers out at 55, added Carlos, a retired worker from the Hutchinson rubber plant where a 16-year-old Deng Xiaoping – the future Chinese leader – briefly worked in the 1920s.

“I was put on unemployment benefits at 57, after 40 years of making tyres. I couldn’t possibly have worked any longer,” he said. “This government has no idea what it means to do this kind of work.”

Echoing the complaints voiced by many protesters, Carlos called for a change of tactics after ten days of nationwide protests that brought millions to the streets – but failed to impress the government.

“I’m fed up with these strolls around town,” he added. “Macron will only listen once we shut down the economy.”

More than two months into a bitter battle that has roiled the nation, opponents of Macron’s plans to raise the retirement age showed no sign of relenting, with the number of protesters on the rise again after dipping in recent weeks.

The rallies marked the ninth day of nationwide strikes and protests, and the first since Macron ordered his prime minister to use special executive powers to bypass parliament, turning an already festering dispute into a political and institutional crisis.

In the French capital, several hundred thousand protesters turned out, setting off from the symbolic protest hub of Bastille. Many held posters with a montage of Macron dressed in full regalia in the manner of “Sun King” Louis XIV, accompanied by the slogan “Méprisant de la République” (contemptuous of the Republic).

“We’re fed up with a president who thinks he’s Louis XIV, who doesn’t listen, who thinks he’s the only one to know what’s good for this country,” said Michel Doneddu, a 72-year-old pensioner from the Paris suburbs.

He held up a placard that read, “Jupiter, the people will bring you back down to Earth”, a reference to a nickname commonly used by critics of Macron’s lofty, arrogant manner.

“We’ve had our share of useless presidents, but at least in the past they knew when to listen and when to back down,” he added. “But Macron, he’s on another planet.”

The march included many first-time protesters, like 32-year-old student Lou, who said she turned out “not so much for the pension reform but because our democracy is at stake”.

Clashes broke out and fires were lit as the rally made its way towards the Opéra Garnier in the heart of Paris, mirroring the violence that has gripped the country since the government used Article 49.3 of the constitution to force Macron’s reform through parliament.

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said more than 120 police officers were injured on Thursday alone in clashes across France, with unrest sweeping several Breton cities and protesters setting fire to the entrance to Bordeaux’ city hall.

‘Our democracy is broken’

The latest round of protests came a day after Macron broke his silence on the bitter pension dispute, saying he was prepared to accept unpopularity because the bill was “necessary” and “in the general interest of the country”.

Striking a defiant tone, Macron said he had “no regrets” except one: he acknowledged that his government had failed to persuade the public of the need for a reform that comes on the heels of the Covid-19 pandemic and with French households battered by galloping inflation.

That the government has failed to convince the French is an understatement. Polls have consistently shown that more than two thirds of the country oppose the pension overhaul. A broad majority of the French has also expressed support for strikes that have disrupted schools, public transport and rubbish collection, burying the streets of Paris – the world’s most visited city – under stinking piles of trash.

Macron’s own approval rating has taken a hit, slumping to just 28% according to an Ifop poll last week – its lowest level since the Yellow Vest crisis. The poll was conducted before the president further enraged his critics by ordering his prime minister to trigger Article 49.3.

While Borne’s government narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly on Monday, surveys suggest the French were hoping for a different outcome altogether. Two in three voters backed the no-confidence motion, according to an Elabe poll, including – astonishingly – a slim majority (51%) of people who backed Macron in last year’s presidential runoff.

At the Paris rally on Thursday, many said they voted for Macron less than 12 months ago, though stressing that they did so to keep the far right out of power – and not in support of his promised pension overhaul.

“Our democracy is broken, it forces us into choosing a lesser evil,” said 21-year-old student Maude. “And even when parliament and the country are opposed to it, the government can still go ahead and do what it likes.”

‘Death sentence’

Borne’s minority government is hardly the first to use Article 49.3, which has been triggered 100 times since 1962. Seldom, however, has it been used to ram through a reform of such scope and so vehemently rejected by the public.

At the heart of the pension overhaul is a contentious plan to raise the country’s minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and stiffen requirements for a full pension, which the government says is required to balance the books amid shifting demographics. 

Unions, however, say the proposed measures are profoundly unfair, primarily affecting low-skilled workers who start their careers early and have physically draining jobs, as well as women with discontinuous careers.

The perceived inequity of Macron’s pension reform has touched a raw nerve in a country that has the word “égalité” (equality) enshrined in its motto. Talk of its unfairness has been a key driver of the mass protests that have brought millions to the streets in cities, towns and villages across the country, drawing from well beyond the ranks of the left.

>> ‘Not just about pensions’: French protesters see threat to social justice in Macron’s reform

“Raising the retirement age is a death sentence for us,” said Julien, a 40-year-old rubbish collector, marching in Paris with dozens of striking colleagues.

“I’ve been doing this job for 10 years and that’s more than enough to wear anyone out,” he said. “Some of my colleagues died during Covid. We were celebrated at the time, and now this is how they thank us!”

Like Julien, railway worker Ragnar said Macron’s previous government had already made it more difficult for workers to retire early owing to the particularly exhausting nature of their jobs, by striking down certain criteria of “pénibilité” (arduousness), such as lifting heavy loads or working with chemical substances.

“We need to amplify our strikes and protests, block the country, make sure there isn’t a single drop of fuel left in petrol stations. It’s the only way to stop the government,” said the 23-year-old member of the SUD trade union.

The French president has achieved at least one thing, his colleague Nathalie quipped: “He’s united every single union against him – that’s quite a feat!”

“The fact that every single one of France’s unions is opposed to the reform should be cause for reflection,” added 49-year-old Audrey, a financial controller and member of the white-collar CGC union. “Our union is all about dialogue, but the government is not interested in talking to us.”

‘The battle in parliament may be over – but we’re not done’

In the build-up to Thursday’s nationwide rallies, union members stepped up their campaign of barrages and disruptions, briefly blocking train stations, bus depots and motorways, including the main road leading to Charles-de-Gaulle airport near Paris, France’s largest hub, where fuel supplies had become “critically low” due to continuing strikes at oil refineries across the country.

Targeted power cuts left the town hall of the 5th arrondissement (district) of Paris – run by a centre-right mayor who backs the reform – without electricity for several hours, while student unions said that more than 400 high schools across the country were temporarily blockaded by protesting students.

In a sign of just how broad the protest movement has become, even the entrance to Panthéon-Assas university in Paris, France’s best-known law faculty and hardly a hotbed of radical politics, had been barricaded.

“The anger is greater than ever,” said Ian Brossat, a deputy mayor of Paris, attending Thursday’s rally wrapped in the tricolour sash typically worn by elected officials during public events.

“Hostility towards an unjust reform has now been supplemented by outrage at the use of an anti-democratic tool,” he said, dismissing Macron’s latest pledge of a “change of method”.

“We’ve seen what the method looks like: it means bypassing the National Assembly and governing from the Élysée Palace,” Brossat added. “He is stuck in the role of an absolute monarch cut off from reality.”

A few steps away, retired teacher Sylvie Bredillet was equally dismissive of Macron’s suggestion that the government had failed to explain the motives of his pension reform.

“He says his government failed to get the message across, but we heard it loud and clear: he wants to force two more years of work on the essential workers who deserve their pensions, instead of taxing the wealthy,” she said.

“Macron says he’s holding his ground – well so are we,” added her partner Philippe, holding a banner that read “Gaulois réfractaire” (Gaul who refuses to change, a phrase Macron controversially used to comment on French resistance to reform) and sporting a moustache to match.

Both vowed to continue protesting until the reform is withdrawn. So did 40-year-old Emilie Dalle, a school headmistress from a suburb of Paris, who said she was even more motivated to march following the president’s “authoritarian” move.

“The battle in parliament may be over, but we’re not done,” she said. “Macron cowed away from democracy, fearing he would lose a vote. Now we have to take matters into our own hands.”

At the height of Thursday’s extraordinary political drama, shortly after the government announced it would force through its contentious pension reform amid a huge fracas in parliament, protesters began to converge on the sprawling Place de la Concorde in central Paris, a mere bridge away from the heavily guarded National Assembly. 

For a moment, the old cradle of revolutions looked to be rolling back the years, convulsed by a spontaneous rush of outrage and anger – though protesters only numbered a few thousand.  

There were the usual suspects, like leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, thundering against a reform he said had “no legitimacy – neither in parliament, nor in the street”. Unionists were also out in strength, hailing a moral victory even as they denounced Macron’s “violation of democracy”.  

Many more were ordinary protesters who had flocked to the Concorde after class or work. One brandished a giant fork made of cardboard as the crowd chanted “Macron démission” (Macron resign). Another spray-painted an ominous message on a metal barrier – “The shadow of the guillotine is nearing” – in the exact spot where Louis XVI was executed 230 years ago. 

“It’s a powerful image, the people taking over this symbol of Paris, at the heart of French institutions,” said 65-year-old George, a retired librarian who rushed to the square after briefly blockading the National Library earlier in the day. 

“When you have millions of people out in the streets protesting for weeks, it’s unfathomable that a government should feel entitled to use the 49.3,” he said, referring to the special measure used by the government to bypass parliament, named after Article 49.3 of the French Constitution. 

“It’s a constitutional putsch,” George added. “It cannot pass, it must not pass!” 

>> A dog day afternoon in French politics as Macron uses ‘nuclear option’ to raise retirement age

As night fell, police charged the demonstrators and used tear gas to clear the square, located a few steps away from the Élysée presidential palace. Small groups of protesters moved through nearby streets setting fires, in scenes that were repeated in other cities across France. More than 250 were arrested in the French capital alone. 

‘Democratic rupture’ 

The government’s brazen move was the straw that broke the camel’s back, said Anna Neiva Cardante, a 23-year-old student who skipped the recent street protests against Macron’s reform but felt compelled to express her outrage at this “denial of democracy”. 

“A vote in the National Assembly was the government’s only chance of securing a measure of legitimacy for its reform,” she said as police began clearing Place de la Concorde. “Now it has a full-blown crisis on its hands.” 

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne’s minority government is hardly the first to use Article 49.3, which has been triggered 100 times since 1962. Seldom, however, has it been used to ram through a reform of such scope and so vehemently rejected by the public. 

At the heart of the pension overhaul is a contentious plan to raise the country’s minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and stiffen requirements for a full pension, which the government says is required to balance the books amid shifting demographics.  

Unions, however, say the proposed measures are profoundly unfair, primarily affecting low-skilled workers who start their careers early and have physically draining jobs, as well as women with discontinuous careers. They have called for a ninth day of mass strikes and protests next Thursday, invigorated by the widespread shock and anger that followed the government’s move to bypass parliament. 

“This reform is outrageous, punishing women and the working class, and denying the hardship of those who have the toughest jobs,” said Neiva Cardante, whose parents – a bricklayer and a cleaner – “are among those who stand to lose most”. 

The perceived inequity of Macron’s pension reform has touched a raw nerve in a country that has the word “égalité” (equality) enshrined in its motto. Talk of its unfairness has been a key driver of the mass protests that brought millions to the streets in cities, towns and villages across the country, drawing from well beyond the ranks of the left. 

>> ‘Not just about pensions’: French protesters see threat to social justice in Macron’s reform

Polls have consistently shown that more than two thirds of the country oppose the government’s plans. A broad majority of the French has also expressed support for strikes that have disrupted schools, public transport and rubbish collection, burying the streets of Paris – the world’s most visited city – under stinking piles of trash. 

The use of Article 49.3 on Thursday amounted to an admission that the contentious reform also lacked a majority in the National Assembly, amid reluctance by many right-wing opposition MPs to bail out Macron’s minority government and brave the wrath of their constituents. 

It was greeted with a deafening chorus of boos and jeers in the lower house of parliament, where left-wing lawmakers belted out the Marseillaise, France’s national anthem, as Prime Minister Borne struggled to raise her voice above the din. 

Conservative MPs, whom Macron had been counting on to back his reform, were also quick to rebuke the government, warning that its move would radicalise opponents and undercut the law’s democratic legitimacy.  

“We have a problem of democracy,” right-wing lawmaker Aurélien Pradié told BFM TV. “This law – which will change the lives of the French – has been adopted without the slightest vote at the National Assembly,” he added, pointing to the failure to hold even a preliminary vote in the lower chamber amid obstructionism from the left. He flagged the risk of a “democratic rupture” in the country following the government’s move.

A crisis of legitimacy 

The lack of a mandate to “change the lives of the French” has been a recurrent theme during the recent mass rallies against pension reform, with protesters stressing that they backed Macron in a presidential runoff last year to keep far-right leader Marine Le Pen out of power – and not because they endorsed his political platform.  

While Macron trounced Le Pen in the April 24 vote, he later failed to secure a majority in legislative elections – becoming the first president to fall short since presidential and parliamentary polls were aligned more than two decades ago. As his own candidates acknowledged at the time, public rejection of his planned pension overhaul was a key factor in the party’s poor showing at the polls. 

Political analyst Chloé Morin pointed to a lingering “misunderstanding” between Macron and many voters over the nature of his mandate. She cited his victory speech in April last year, when the freshly re-elected president acknowledged voters who backed him “not out of support for[his] ideas but to block those of the far right”. 

“At the time, Macron said he had ‘a duty towards’ those voters,” Morin told French daily Ouest France. “Now they feel betrayed and despised.” 

Antoine Bristielle, a public opinion expert at the Fondation Jean-Jaures think tank, said enacting such an important law without a parliamentary vote would further antagonise the country and deepen anti-Macron sentiment, with memories of the Yellow Vest insurgency still vivid. He pointed to an Ifop poll this week showing that roughly eight out of 10 people opposed legislating in this way, including a majority of voters who backed Macron in the first round of last year’s presidential election.  

“The 49.3 is perceived as a symbol of brutality, with the potential to erode support both for the government and democratic institutions,” he said, adding that surveys had revealed increasing resentment of governments perceived as ignoring the public.  

“People cannot understand why a bill that is so overwhelmingly rejected by voters would be forced through anyway,” Bristielle explained. “This disconnect between legislators and the popular will is no longer acceptable. Voters are no longer content with delegating power for five years.” 

07:03

Anger at the use of Article 49.3 is also set to further poison debates and result in more gridlock at the already turbulent National Assembly, where opposition parties tabled a motion of no-confidence in Borne’s government on Friday, to be voted on next week. 

Having failed to secure enough support for his contentious bill, Macron is now banking on the opposition also failing to gather enough votes to topple his government. The tactic could offer him a victory by default but also jeopardise chances of building parliamentary consensus going forward.

“The risk for Macron now is that he ends up being powerless to get anything significant done over the next four years,” said Bristielle, for whom the president’s top-down approach to government is “ill-suited” to the context of a hung parliament where compromise and coalition-building are of the essence. 

His ruling Renaissance party had so far enjoyed a measure of success in navigating the challenges of minority rule, relying on support from opposition lawmakers – sometimes from the left, more often from the right – to pass legislation in a deeply divided National Assembly counting large delegations of MPs from the far right and the hard left. But such co-operation is surely off the cards, at least in the coming weeks or months. 

French editorialists were unsparing in their assessment of Macron’s gamble, which conservative daily Le Figaro branded a “defeat” for the president and Le Monde likened to “playing with fire”.  

“A climate of political crisis hangs over the country,” read Le Monde’s daily editorial column on Friday, warning that Macron risked “durably alienating swathes of the country, fostering tenacious resentment and even kindling sparks of violence”. 

Regional daily La Voix du Nord scolded the president for shying away from a vote, arguing that “the risk of an honourable defeat” was preferable to “fanning the flames of social unrest”. 

“On this day, March 16, ‘Macronism’ ordered its own death,” added left-leaning Libération, sanctioning the “personal failure” of a president “who came to power on a pledge to rejuvenate French democracy” but only “increased the flaws he had promised to fix”.

“When the rubbish collectors go on strike, the trashers are indignant.” Jacques Prévert’s iconic play on words has long been a favourite slogan of the French left – and indeed of all advocates of workers’ right to lay down their tools in protest.

Two months into a bitter tussle over pension reform, and with garbage piling up in the streets of Paris and other cities, the French poet’s words resonate with a festering labour dispute that opponents of Macron’s reform have successfully reframed as a battle for social justice.

The fight over Macron’s flagship – and deeply unpopular – pension overhaul has now entered the final stretch, moving through tricky political territory in parliament even as unions and protesters continue to challenge it in the street.

At its heart is a plan to raise the country’s minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 and stiffen requirements for a full pension, which the government says is required to balance the books amid shifting demographics. Unions, however, say the proposed measures are profoundly unfair, primarily affecting low-skilled workers who start their careers early and have physically draining jobs, as well as women with discontinuous careers.

>> ‘I can’t take any more’: Working-class French lament Macron’s push to raise retirement age

A week of strike action by dustbin collectors has resulted in some 5,600 tonnes of garbage piling up across the French capital, including in front of the right-wing-dominated Senate, which gave the pension reform its preliminary backing in a late-night vote on Saturday.

But the plan to raise France’s minimum retirement age faces further hurdles in parliament later this week – with rubbish piles growing by the day, the smell of decaying food wafting in the wind, and only late-winter temperatures sparing Parisians a greater stench.

Betraying France’s essential workers

The government, trade unions, and Paris city officials have been trading the blame for allowing the streets of the world’s most visited city to be fouled, with tourist hotspots among the areas affected by the strike.

In a flurry of tweets on Sunday, Sylvain Gaillard, a lawmaker from Macron’s ruling Renaissance party, urged Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s left-leaning administration to “requisition” garbage trucks and incinerators blocked by the strikers, while Olivia Grégoire and Clément Beaune, the junior ministers for tourism and European affairs respectively, both slammed the municipality’s “contempt for Parisians”. The next day, Gabriel Attal, the junior budget minister, accused Hidalgo of encouraging the city’s employees to go on strike.

Paris officials were quick to fire back, laying the blame squarely on the government’s shoulders.

“Rubbish collectors worked throughout the pandemic; it took this infamous pension reform for them to lay down their tools,” Ian Brossat, a deputy mayor of Paris, hit back in a tweet. “And how does the government thank them? With two more years of work!”

At the Ivry incinerator on the eastern edge of Paris, one of three blocked facilities that process most of the capital’s waste, sewage worker Julien Devaux said he was not surprised to see the government “turn its back” on the essential workers it championed at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I think the public was truly grateful, but we also knew those in power would not live up to their word,” said the 46-year-old representative of the CGT trade union, manning the picket line along with a few dozen colleagues.

Rubbish collectors can currently retire from the age of 57 owing to the particularly tough nature of their jobs, while sewage workers can leave at 52. According to the CGT, both categories will have to work two more years under the government’s planned reform, a prospect Devaux says is untenable.

“I can assure you that spending three to four hours down in the sewers, as we do on an average day, is like working 48 hours round-the-clock,” he explained. “I know plenty of colleagues who are physically crushed by the time they reach their mid-40s. Some die even before retirement while many more fall critically ill soon after.”

According to studies by the IRNS health watchdog, sewage workers are twice as likely to die before the age of 65 as the rest of the population. The huge discrepancy reflects broader inequalities affecting blue-collar workers, who stand to lose most from the planned pension overhaul.

Should the reform pass, Devaux added, “there will be more and more of us who never get to enjoy the pension they deserve”.

Public support

The perceived inequity of Macron’s pension reform has touched a raw nerve in a country that has the word “égalité” (equality) enshrined in its motto. Talk of its unfairness has been a key driver of the mass protests that brought millions to the streets in cities, towns and villages across the country, drawing from well beyond the ranks of the left.

The notion of pénibilité (arduousness) in particular has been a recurrent theme, with protesters lamented the government’s refusal to acknowledge the hardship endured by low-income workers who perform physically-draining tasks. Macron has in the past said he was “not a fan” of the word pénibilité, “because it suggests that work is a pain”.

In January, more than a hundred public figures, including last year’s Nobel literature laureate Annie Ernaux, signed a petition denouncing a reform that “runs contrary to the history of social progress, (…) hitting hardest those who work in the most difficult, physically and psychologically demanding jobs, and who are less likely to enjoy a peaceful retirement and imagine a future after the age of 64”.

Polls have consistently shown that more than two thirds of the country oppose the government’s plans – including a staggering three in four women, according to a recent Elabe poll. A broad majority of the French has also expressed support for strikes that have disrupted schools, public transport and fuel deliveries.

>> ‘Not just about pensions’: French protesters see threat to social justice in Macron’s reform

At the picket line in Ivry, Devaux said the public had been broadly supportive of their struggle, “directing their wrath at the government that caused this situation in the first place”.

“Our job is to keep Paris clean – none of us are happy to see rubbish pile up,” he said. “But the public understand that this is the only tool we have to defend our rights.”

Over in central Paris, pastry chef Romain Gaia offered support for the rubbish collectors even as he complained of rats and mice gathering around smelly piles of trash. “They are quite right to strike,” he told AFP. “Normally they have no power, but when they lay down their tools, that’s when they have power.”

Russian roulette

Despite promises to “grind the economy to a halt”, France’s united front of trade unions has so far proved powerless to stop the pension reform in its tracks, while the ebbing number of protesters who turned out at rallies on Saturday led some analysts to suggest their momentum may be fading.

Still, the scale of opposition to the reform has piled the pressure on ministers and lawmakers alike, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of looming votes.

01:48

Unions are planning more strikes and an eighth round of nationwide protests on Wednesday, the day the pension reform heads to a committee of seven senators and seven lower-house lawmakers. They will aim to find a compromise between the two chambers’ versions of the legislation.

If the committee reaches a deal, the approved text will be put to a vote the following day in both the Senate and the National Assembly. However, the outcome in the latter chamber, where Macron’s centrist alliance lost its majority last year, is hard to predict, with the government dependent on support from conservative lawmakers in the opposition.

At the weekend, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne tweeted her optimism that the measure would be “definitively adopted in the coming days”. She is hoping the government won’t have to resort to a special constitutional option, known as the “article 49.3”, that would force the pension reform through without a vote.

Borne has used that mechanism 10 times before, but invoking it for such a sensitive issue would be seen as an explosive move, almost certainly triggering a no-confidence motion that many opposition parties would be tempted to support.

That prospect means the government effectively faces a choice between two gambles, the conservatives’ top senator Bruno Retailleau quipped on Sunday: “Either playing Russian roulette (with a vote on the bill) or firing the Big Bertha gun (and facing a no-confidence vote)”.

Issued on: 07/03/2023 – 21:52

In the French capital, where organisers say well over half a million people turned out (police put the number at fewer than 100,000), unionists and left-wing parties traded their traditional eastern rallying points for the wealthy 6th arrondissement (district) of central Paris, gathering along the fashion boulevards of the left bank.

Outside the famed Lutetia palace hotel, puzzled tourists and shoppers worked their way through a sea of union and other flags. A few steps away, dozens of women danced to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s “I will survive”, each of them dressed as the feminist champion Rosie the Riveter in her iconic blue overalls.

Among them was Camille, a 54-year-old publisher who said she turned out to protest in solidarity with the low-income workers – many of them women – who “stand to lose most” from the pension overhaul. She slammed a reform “hashed out in a hurried and brutal manner, without consultations and despite overwhelming opposition”.

“Women are structurally underpaid and their pensions are lower as a result. And yet they have some of the most exhausting jobs, working absurd hours on top of caring for the young and the elderly,” she said, pointing to the fact that women’s pensions are on average 40 percent lower than men’s.

She added: “The fact that they’re being asked to work longer now only adds insult to injury.“

The reform’s Achilles’ heel

Macron has staked his reformist credentials on passage of his flagship pension overhaul, which polls say around two thirds of the French now oppose – including a staggering 74 percent of women, according to a recent survey by the Elabe institute.

The government argues that raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 and stiffening the requirements for a full pension are required to balance the pension system amid shifting demographics. But unions say the proposed measures are unfair and would disproportionately affect low-skilled workers who start their careers early, as well as women.

>> ‘I can’t take any more’: Working-class French lament Macron’s push to raise retirement age

Opponents of the reform have succeeded in framing the pension debate in much larger terms, focusing on the questions of how wealth is distributed under Macron, and whether the poorest and most vulnerable will carry the burden of his proposals.

Talk of the text’s gender imbalance has gained particular traction, not least since one of Macron’s own ministers admitted in January that it would “leave women a little penalised” – in one of several PR blunders that have marred the government’s attempts to promote its increasingly unpopular plan.

“Macron and his government have lied by claiming that women would be better off thanks to this reform,” said Camille at the Paris rally. “This injustice towards women is the reform’s Achilles’ heel: a united front of French women can defeat it.”

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The sense that the government had misled women was shared by many protesters, fuelling their resentment of the proposal, which is currently being hurried through parliament.

“The government claimed the reform would foster ‘justice’ and ‘equality’, but it soon turned out to be a publicity stunt,” said Sandrine Tellier, 47, a representative of the energy and mining branch of the Force Ouvrière trade union. “In reality, it merely aggravates existing inequalities.”

Justice at stake

France’s enduring gender pay gap is reflected in a discrepancy between the average pensions paid out to men and women. That discrepancy is exacerbated by rules penalising those who worked part time or whose careers are interrupted by childcare.

They include 64-year-old Florentine Delangue, whose record of unpaid apprenticeships and career interruptions mean she is yet to qualify for a full pension, despite getting her first job at a hair salon aged 16.

“I started working two years before my husband, but I will have to keep going after he’s retired,” she said. “That’s why I’m angry.”

Jacqueline, a 57-year-old lab worker at a Paris hospital, said she couldn’t bear the prospect of having to work an extra two years before qualifying for a full pension. She claimed she had never taken part in a protest before.

“I worked part-time to raise my daughter, but I had no choice. It’s not like I went part-time to go to the beach or something,” she said. “This is too much. I’m too tired and there’s too much injustice.”

>> ‘Not just about pensions’: French protesters see threat to social justice in Macron’s reform

The notion of pénibilité (arduousness) was a recurrent theme at the rally, where protesters lamented the government’s refusal to acknowledge the hardship endured by low-income workers who perform physically-draining tasks. Macron has in the past said he was “not a fan” of the word pénibilité, “because it suggests that work is a pain”.

Such a stance reflects politicians’ “insensitivity” and “ignorance of the realities of life”, said veteran theatre director Ariane Mnouchkine, adding that “parliamentarians should try working as hotel cleaners to see what back-breaking work really feels like”.

Mnouchkine’s troupe from the Theatre du Soleil carried a huge statue of Lady Justice, blindfolded and holding a balance and sword. The 84-year-old director said the very principle of justice was at stake in France’s pension battle.

“The government is sentencing those who live the toughest lives to tougher retirement, whereas they deserve a more comfortable one,” she explained. “The only consolation is that everyone seems to have realised just how unfair this is.”