People across France took to the streets in the 11th day of widespread mobilisations and walkouts on Thursday in protest against pension reform – single-day protests and rolling strikes have been going on for about two and a half months, since the first day of action on January 19th.
With several sectors, such as oil refineries, waste collection and public and rail transport services, having been impacted for the last several weeks, many are wondering when the mobilisation will come to an end.
Here is what to expect;
Next strike
A few unions continue with rolling strikes – among them air traffic controllers – but most action is now concentrated in single-day actions.
The next one of these is planned for Thursday, April 13th.
However, these strikes have become steadily less disruptive as time has gone on – the normal pattern for long-running strikes as workers (who are not paid while on strike) gradually return to work.
On the most recent strike day, April 6th, about 1.2 million health workers – down from 7.9 percent to 7.2 percent – walked out, while in the state civil service, which represents 2.5 million employees in France, strike rates dropped from 6.9 percent to 6.6 percent.
As for energy workers, EDF counted almost one in two workers out on strike during the early days of mobilisation, but participation fell to 24.9 percent on April 6th, according to reporting by The world.
Metro lines in Paris ran with limited interruption on Thursday, and on the national level, three out of four high-speed TGV trains ran with France’s SNCF.
Attendance at the marches and demos that took place across France also fell – according to figures from France’s ministry of interior, about 570,000 people took to the streets, a drop from the 740,000 counted on March 28th.
Union leaders acknowledged a decrease in protest participation as well. The leader of the CFDT union, Laurent Berger, rocognised the decrease, but simultaneously stressed that mobilisations “remain important at this stage”.
Other sectors have seen strike action begin to drop too. Paris waste collectors ended their three week strike on March 29th. The CGT union representing waste workers said that this was because there were “almost no more strikers” because “financially speaking, a strike is very very expensive”.
A new rolling strike for Paris waste collectors is set to start on April 13th, but it is likely similar issues regarding financial strain will remain a concern for workers. As such, it is not clear at this point how disruptive the new waste strike will be. The previous one led to over 10,000 tonnes of uncollected waste being left on the capital’s streets.
Vote from the Constitutional Council
The April 13th strike was called for the day before the deadline for France’s Constitutional Council to announce their findings regarding the fate of pension reform.
They have the power to either approve it entirely, order the government to make changes or strike it down completely, although this last option is unusual.
The Council will have to determine whether appeals made by opposition parties on the nature of the pension reform bill are political in nature, or legal and their role is primarily to determine if there were procedural issues with the passing of the bill.
Expert in French electoral law Jean-Pierre Camby, associate professor at the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, told Le Monde that “the opposition’s arguments may not be sufficient” for the bill to be entirely censured by the Council, particularly due to the arguments having a political nature to them.
“The application of these constitutional texts cannot lead to a decision of unconstitutionality based on procedure (…) the arguments of general scope on the clarity and sincerity of the debate put forward by the oppositions are more of a political nature, which the Council habitually rejects, even if the classic conditions of the debate are altered”, the law expert told Le Monde.
Camby also explained in his interview with Le Monde that “a total censure by the Constitutional Council could appear as an open declaration of war against the executive branch and the Sénat majority.”
Members of opposition parties have called for a public referendum (RIP) on pension reform, hoping to block the law, with a request having also been submitted to the Constitutional Council.
If the Constitutional Council is favourable to the organisation of the referendum – meaning they have decided that the conditions required for the calling of a referendum are met – then French parliamentarians would still need to get the support of at least 10 percent of the electorate.
What next after April 14th?
Obviously, the next stage depends on what the Council announced, but unions have begun making statements about how they will respond. On Thursday, the new secretary general for the hardline CGT, Sophie Binet, said: “Whatever happens, the mobilisation will continue in one form or another”.
The head of the more moderate CFDT union Laurent Berger said “there is no question about challenging the legitimacy of the Constitutional Council”. If the bill is approved, Berger said that “we will recognise its decision, but that doesn’t mean we will stop saying what we think about this reform. There are quite a few possible scenarios and we will advise accordingly.”
Berger is also reported, according to Le Figaro, to have said, that: “Those who believe we will have mobilisations every two days once the law is enacted are living in a dream”.
But more radical unions have differed in their tone. The head of the Force Ouvrière union said that “the movement will continue, as we have already done against other laws that have passed”, and the head of the Solidaires union, Murielle Guilbert, said “the Constitutional Council is not the alpha and omega”.
More strikes?
As such, it is likely that some mobilisations would continue to be held after April 14th, but French strikes are only really effective if all eight of the union federations get involved.
Isolated strikes called by a single union tend not to cause much disruption, and as noted above participation in the strikes has fallen quite dramatically in recent weeks.
Rolling strikes in some sectors could also continue after the results are released on Friday. In particular, waste workers in the nation’s capital are expected to continue striking, though disruption levels are not yet clear.
As for the transport sector, SNCF workers have maintained their rolling strike action since March 7th, with light daily disruptions and more significant ones during days of national mobilisation. This could continue after the April 14th deadline, but as disruption has begun to decrease, it is likely to be less impactful should the council approve the pension reform law.
Fuel shortages
Blockades by oil refineries have affected access to petrol and diesel across the country, but the impacts have begun to decrease. Nationally, about 7.3 percent of service stations in France were missing at least one type of fuel on Thursday, according to Le Figaro. In total, 23 of France’s 96 mainland départements had at least 10 percent of their stations experiencing shortages.
The effects have been concentrated in certain areas, originally in the west and in the south of the country, and more recently in and around the Paris region.
READ MORE: MAP: Where in France are blockades causing fuel shortages?
In the Val-de-Marne département, more than 40 percent of stations were experiencing shortages of some degree, and in Paris specifically 41.7 percent of fuel stations reported shortages of at least one type of fuel.
Strike action by refinery workers may continue after the April 14th deadline, but as of Thursday, blockades were only in place at two of France’s seven refineries, and one of those two – the Port-Jérôme-Gravenchon refinery – where production had stopped due to blockades and strikes against pension reform on March 25th – restarted production on Tuesday, allowing shipments of fuel to the struggling Paris region.
French courts have blocked moves to requisition (force striking workers back to work) some oil refinery workers, but overall the fuel situation was improving across the country as of Thursday, April 7th.
Next dates?
The general pattern so far has been that unions use the evening of a strike day to announce dates for the next action – we should therefore know more on April 13th or 14th – you can keep up with the latest announcements in our strike section HERE.