On said they were in bad shape, weakened, marginalized. Yet it is they who have held the upper hand since January, they who are driving the government crazy, they who remind Emmanuel Macron that the left has not disappeared from the political landscape. Organizers and engines of the social movement against the pension reform, the unions have so far resisted all the traps, even giving the impression of emerging strengthened from sequences that could have been fatal to them.
Thus the last congress of the CGT, which opened on Monday March 27 with a strong challenge to the results of the outgoing secretary general, Philippe Martinez, to end, four days later, on an unprecedented scene: the surprise promotion of a feminine face, Sophie Binet. The pedigree of this official from the General Union of Engineers, Executives and Technicians contrasts with the traditional canons of the union: former socialist, feminist, ecologist.
It is as if a renewal were blowing through an organization crippled by divisions. The first decision of the novice was to continue the fight in a unitary framework. The CGT will be well alongside the other centrals, Wednesday, April 5, to remind the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, of the determination of the inter-union to obtain the withdrawal of the text pushing back the legal age of departure to 64 years.
Since the beginning of the conflict, unity has been the Grail of the unions, which have taken jealous care to ensure that the movement, based on non-violence and the support of public opinion, does not escape them. Their attitude is in no way the business of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who worked in June 2022, with the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (Nupes), for the left to unite behind him. The inter-union remains deaf to its proposal to transform the April 6 day of action into a general strike.
Promise of resistance from the left
Powerless to take control of the social movement, the former deputy for Bouches-du-Rhône has, on the other hand, become the convenient scapegoat of the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who, in a interview at Sunday newspaperon April 2, the camp as a dangerous agitator, quick to “call for prohibited demonstrations”To “pouring out his hatred on the police” and to “trying to obtain through disorder what he does not obtain through the ballot box”.
In this context, the clear victory, Sunday, of the dissident socialist candidate Martine Froger in the partial legislative of Ariège against the candidate LFI-Nupes Bénédicte Taurine appears as the first setback inflicted by a part of the left on the one who claimed submit it. The result highlights in particular the fracture which widened during the last congress of the Socialist Party, in January, in Marseilles: nearly half of the PS criticizes the first secretary, Olivier Faure, of scuttling the socialist heritage.
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