Posted Jan 25, 2023, 4:59 PMUpdated on Jan 25, 2023 at 7:40 PM
After the union symbol of the Labor Exchange, the more political symbol of the National Assembly. The leaders of the eight French unions met this Wednesday at the beginning of the afternoon to hold a press conference in front of the Palais-Bourbon, in Paris, while its social affairs commission heard the people in charge of the retirement file of the five representative confederations. .
For this second unitary meeting, it was Philippe Martinez, the general secretary of the CGT, the second organization of employees, who took the floor to read a new joint declaration. This again denounces an “unfair and brutal” reform, while the pension system “is not in danger”.
keep up the pressure
She also welcomes the “massive success” of the first day of protest, which mobilized 2 million demonstrators according to the unions (1.1 million according to the Ministry of the Interior). And it calls for maintaining the pressure between now and January 31, the date of the next interprofessional mobilization, by multiplying actions and initiatives throughout the territory.
The unions explain that they “have had no rest during the consultation […] to propose other financing solutions” and plead for “other solutions”: “A real employment policy, taking into account the difficulties of seniors, fighting against the inequalities faced by women […] ; develop access to vocational training in order to allow retraining”.
This new joint statement aims to maintain the pressure, while twelve days separate the mobilization of the 19th from that of the 31st. The eight unions know that they are expected at the turn with the challenge of exceeding the success of their first day of stock. This was massive but did not break the 2010 record of 1.23 million demonstrators against the then pension reform, according to the police count.
No cloud on the horizon
To do this, they must retain what was largely the strength of the first day of action against the pension reform, which Laurent Berger, the leader of the CFDT pointed out on Wednesday: the existence of a “mobilization massive in places where there is usually no mobilization, with workers who until now demonstrated little “. A mobilization made possible by the high number of meeting places everywhere in France with the census of 250 demonstrations by the unions. Important parades took place in medium-sized towns in the region.
For the moment, no cloud comes to darken their relations. The call to continue to mobilize between the two days of action contributes to this. And then everyone does their part: in the press release announcing a call for a strike on February 7 and 8 and a possible renewable strike, the CGT of railway workers and SUD-Rail took care to specify that this calendar was “adaptable according to the interprofessional calendar”.