From Paris
It doesn’t matter what the figure is, whether the official one or that of the unions, the truth is that the 8 French unions who called this January 19 to a strike and a demonstration against raising the minimum retirement age (64 years against the current 62), they achieved their purpose beyond what was expected. The more than 200 demonstrations that took place throughout the country according to the police, 1.2 million people gathered while the General Secretary of the CGT, Philippe Martínez, spoke of “more than two million people”.
In Paris, hours before the planned demonstration in the Place de la République, it was already clear that it was going to be a historic day: hundreds of people peacefully walked through the streets with banners in their hands in the direction of the square. Thomas, an employee of the Renault automaker with a bunch of CGT stickers on his clothes, told PageI1: “Today is not only the march against Macron and his unfair pension plan, but against a whole world system that makes the lower middle classes and workers a sandwich for its insatiable appetite.”
In Paris, the figures of the CGT and the police also differ: 400 thousand people according to the first source, 80 thousand according to the second. In any case, the expected barrier was largely overcome: the 8 unions gathered in the same fight for the first time in the last 12 years wanted to increase the number of 890,000 people reached in November 2019 against another plan to reform the system of pensions that French President Emmanuel Macron withdrew in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Small, medium or large cities, the protesters flocked to a call that will not be the last. The sectoral strikes that affected education, transport, refineries and a few other key sectors (public or private) also had significant margins of support.
The union centrals summoned the population again on January 31 for a new day of strike and protests. Perhaps this begins a long clash with the Head of State and his Prime Minister over a project whose highly unfair and penalizing nature for the most fragile sectors of society has ceased to be ideological speculation. Since the head of the Executive, Elisabeth Borne, announced the project on January 10, all the media, progressive, center or right, reached the same conclusion: It is a very negative reform for the poor, women and for people who have had incomplete or cut careers and that it does not put the most protected classes to contribute.
Macron will go ahead with the reform
Despite the strength of the protests, Emmanuel Macron said from Barcelona that the government would go ahead with the reform “with respect, spirit of dialogue, but with determination and responsibility”. According to the head of state, the reform is “fair and responsible.” As for the head of government, Borne said “let’s continue debating and convincing.”
Something fundamental changed between the last few days and this Thursday the 19th: nobody knew, neither the government nor the unions, if society would fulfill its mission of confronting the decisions of power in the street. The answer has been an even more resounding yes because, out of the ordinary, there were no serious incidents at the end of the protests, as usually happens in each demonstration. In the streets, an active and respectful order was felt, a very firm determination to be present to say no to yet another pension reform with, each time, the same victims at the end of the law. If political action is communication, the unions and the left won the battle of public opinion. The street is massively against an ill-prepared reform, poorly presented and in total contradiction with Macron’s promises. The leader of the radical left of France Unsubmissive, Jean-Luc Mélenchon stressed that “the government has lost a battle, and it is that of not having been able to convince the people.”
In Paris, there was a strong feeling of injustice and the will to lead a great social movement like the one that took place in 1995 against the reforms of Prime Minister Alain Juppé and in 2010 in response to those of Nicolas Sarkozy’s head of government, François Fillon. “I’ll stay on the streets until I retire if necessary, but this paper reform won’t happen,” promised Barbara, a 50-year-old woman employed by the RATP transport company. Next to her, a couple of colleagues, Valentin and Michelle, were saying “we don’t have much to lose anymore. They took everything from us, they broke the hospitals, public transport is disgusting, they broke social security, unemployment insurance and now they want to make us work to the edge of the grave. Not !”.
In Republic Square, in a very festive atmosphere, a group of demonstrators danced singing “with Macron we will no longer have a working life but a working death”. Fabien Roussel, the National Secretary of the French Communist Party told the media: “today is the great union of all those who, first of all, reject this pension reform, but also of those who are starting to get fed up” . In turn, the First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, said that “with 85% of the French against this project, if the head of state had a bit of logic in his ideas, he would submit the project to referendum”.
In terms of power relations with society, the government lost the first crusade on Thursday. The president and the Executive have been dismantling the social State for a long time and kidding that fundamental ingredient that is social democracy. Macronism enters a land full of mines in its conviction to reform against the population. It still bets on the lowest, that is, social exhaustion as a formula for people to demobilize and resign themselves to a new cut in their social rights.
In 1995, when the protests against the late President Jacques Chirac’s reforms presented by his Prime Minister Alain Juppé reached two million people, the Executive withdrew them: only those two million came together after several weeks of protests. Those of this Thursday converged immediately and there was almost no French town that did not see people parade. It is expected that the text of the law with the reform will be presented in the National Assembly on February 6. From now to then the unions and the left will continue reaping the seeds they sowed yesterday. The mobilization was history and the battle that is being outlined will be history as well.
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