Striking RATP agents were on the streets on Thursday to denounce the drop in their purchasing power. And they were not alone since an interprofessional demonstration was organized, almost everywhere in France and in particular in Paris. The national day of action organized Thursday for the defense of wages by the CGT brought together 30,400 people throughout France, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, the CGT claiming for its part “more than 100,000 participants”.
In the capital, several thousand demonstrators answered the call and gathered between Place de la République and Opéra. The police counted 2,400 demonstrators, and the CGT, which alone called for this day of strikes and demonstrations, counted 10,000. These figures mark a mobilization higher than that of the previous day of action of the CGT, the 27 October, but a decline compared to that of October 18, when the ministry had counted 107,000 demonstrators throughout the country and the CGT 300,000.
“There is a real problem of purchasing power in this country, it is only by increasing wages that we can solve it”, hammered the secretary general of the CGT Philippe Martinez, in the parade of Nîmes, where he had gone to meet the CHU strikers.
The CGT had announced to expect “150 to 200” places of demonstration everywhere in France. But few people took to the streets on Thursday. The police counted a thousand demonstrators in Lyon, 650 in Lille, 300 in Bordeaux.
In a press release released this Thursday evening, the CGT repeats that “raising wages remains an emergency! “. It calls on “all workers to remain mobilized to win wage increases, social minima, pensions and impose a new choice of society! “.
“A big blow” declares the general secretary of the CGT-RATP
Present in the Parisian procession, the national secretary of the Communist Party Fabien Roussel called on the employees to “reoccupy the roundabouts and the public space”. The deputy from the North “regretted that we were not all together”. The general secretary of Force Ouvrière, Frédéric Souillot, had in fact not called for this national mobilization, criticizing these “leapfrog” days of action.
However, he made the trip to the RATP to support his majority troops among the drivers and welcomed “a full mobilization”. The representative unions (CGT, FO and Unsa) of the Parisian authority are demanding wage increases as a priority, but also an improvement in working conditions and recruitment.
“Today is a big warning shot and we hope they will hear it,” said CGT-RATP secretary general Bertrand Hammache. The RATP does not envisage a new salary increase in the immediate future (+ 5.2% in 2022 according to management) but Jean Castex, whose appointment as head of the management was validated by Parliament on Wednesday, made know that he would open negotiations as early as December.
Another reason for mobilization: the future pension reform with a possible postponement of the legal retirement age and the end of special schemes.