Green MP Sandrine Rousseau called Wednesday for a “general strike”, hoping that the strike movement in refineries and fuel depots at TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil will cause a “spark”.
“I hope that will be the spark that will ignite a general strike movement because the anger in the country is such that I think there is really room to block and change the liberal policies that are put in place by the government, ”MP EELV from Paris told franceinfo.
“We have been saying for years now that social movements are useless, but now we realize that it is for something,” she added.
Employees of six of the seven refineries in France voted on Wednesday at dawn to continue the strike to obtain better wages, prolonging the fuel shortage which affects the entire country. Shortly after 9 a.m., the government launched, as it had threatened the day before, the requisition of personnel from the ExxonMobil depot in Gravenchon-Port-Jérôme (Seine-Maritime).
“Really something else to do for the country to get better”
Asked about the October 16 march, at the call of the left-wing parties allied within Nupes, Sandrine Rousseau felt that her message was to say “that there is no fatality in the problems experienced by the French men and women today to fill their fridge, as well as to pay their bills”. “There is hope there is really something else to do for the country to get better”.
“A whole series of sectors today which find that they are in a situation of bad remuneration should return to the movement”, abounded the deputy LFI Alexis Corbière at the microphone of RTL. For him, “it’s not their fight, it’s our fight”. “All employees must understand that the victory” of refinery employees “would open the door to all those (…) who do not have the same balance of power”, added the deputy for Seine-Saint-Denis, in also calling for participation in Sunday’s “March Against High Costs and Climate Inaction”.
March in which the main unions, including the CGT, refused to join, notably leading to the withdrawal of the boss of the socialist senators Patrick Kanner who will not go there “in a personal capacity”, he explained to France info, because for him, the role of politics is to “support the unions”.