Provided for in the first article of the pension reform, the extinction of several special regimes, including those of the RATP and energy companies, was voted by the senators on Saturday March 4 in the evening. It is specified that agents recruited from September 2023 will be affiliated to the common law scheme for old-age insurance. This is one of the most sensitive measures of the pension reform project, as pressure mounts in the streets and businesses before the mobilization of March 7.
The electricians and gas operators, concerned like the RATP by this disappearance of their regime, also began a renewable strike on Friday. It leads to reductions in electricity production in several nuclear power plants, without causing cuts for customers.
“An ideological and demagogic proposal” for the left
The left, which has largely occupied the field in the Senate since the start of the debates on Thursday, argued all day Saturday against the first article of the government bill which provides for the gradual extinction of five special regimes (electricity and gas industries, RATP, Banque de France, clerks and employees of notaries, members of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council). The right being almost absent from the discussion.
“You have decided to confine a major sector of our energy sovereignty”, launched the president of the group PS Patrick Kanner in the address of the minister of labour. “You are going to go down in the history of the gravediggers of our social protection”. For the left, the end of special diets is “an ideological and demagogic proposal”, which will not generate financial gain. The trades concerned “Are they as painful yesterday as they are today? »retorted the general rapporteur Élisabeth Doineau (Centrist Union). “We have to open our eyes, we are asking for efforts from all French people, whoever they are”.
“You want to obstruct, we don’t”, dropped the head of senators LR Bruno Retailleau on his side on Saturday. The latter also wants these special schemes to also be abolished for current employees, but his proposal will be examined later. The government is against, and its amendment could be rejected, for lack of support from the centrists.
Employment of seniors
Senators must now examine this Sunday, March 5, another key point of the reform, “the senior index”. Rejected in mid-February by the National Assembly to the chagrin of the government, this measure provides for an obligation for companies with more than 50 employees to publish indicators on their employment rate of employees over 55 years old.
The social standoff continues to tense. The unions intend to mobilize on Tuesday, the sixth day of action, even more than on January 31, when the police had identified 1.27 million participants and the inter-union more than 2.5 million. According to police sources, between 1.1 and 1.4 million demonstrators are expected, including 60 to 90,000 in Paris.