“If even that is taken away from us, why keep getting up? »

by time news

It has been a long time since Guéret, a small prefecture in Creuse (13,700 inhabitants for the agglomeration), had not been mentioned in the national media, alongside Mende, Vierzon, Périgueux, Alès, among other medium-sized towns in this France that some say “peripheral” on a war footing to say no to the postponement of the legal retirement age to 64 years. They were 4,300 to blacken the place Bonnyaud, on January 31 (more than 5,000, according to the unions), more than on January 19, and perhaps less than on February 7 and 11 – despite the winter holidays. Unheard of since 1995 and the massive strikes against the “Juppé plan” on pensions. Even during the French victories at the World Cups. That is to say the exasperation that manages to make workers and bank managers, retirees and high school students, policemen and railway workers, agents of the department, the hospital, the prefecture, categories C, B and A, walk side by side, in this administrative city which lives mainly on public employment. We even saw craftsmen and farmers make the trip.

Vincent Goubault, 53, drywall craftsman in Dun-le-Palestel, February 4, 2023. “We end up with pensions of misery, a craftsman's retirement is not enough.  We went up, we give too much power to shareholders, while companies run thanks to the little people.  I had not demonstrated since 1986 and the Devaquet law.  »

Artisan plasterer in Dun-le-Palestel, Vincent Goubault, 53 years old and a herniated disc, had not taken to the streets since high school, in 1986, against the Devaquet law. “But that’s the last straw. We already live on the reserve. » In addition to the two years more that he “would take”he says, like a convict, he especially feels a ” contempt “. For those who wear their bodies out in dust, scaffolding, chemicals. Or those who are “taken for accounting lines”. Like his wife, “small civil servant” at the prefecture of Guéret, “transferred” from one service to another according to restructuring and dematerialization. It shows the index grid of the latter, whose monthly point has been revalued by just a few centimes in fifteen years.

A reform that would“improve the consideration of arduousness”according to the government? “It was Macron who removed risk factors from the arduousness account! », strangles the craftsman – in 2017 the carrying of heavy loads, painful postures, mechanical vibrations and chemical risks were removed. Mr. Goubault hoped that they would be reintegrated into the reform. The government preferred to include the first three in a new investment fund for the prevention of professional wear and tear. Without restoring the possibility of retiring before the legal age.

Read also: Pension reform: what are the points of the project that crystallize the debates?

“Disconnection of the elites”

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