Posted Jan 19, 2023, 6:52 AMUpdated on Jan 20, 2023 at 1:40 p.m.
No one knows if the union mobilization this Thursday against the pension reform will be really massive, even less if it will move a few lines of the government project. One thing is certain, however: this reform has already changed union geography. The archipelago of eight confederal organizations has become a bloc. For a few weeks or permanently? This will make all the difference between an alliance of circumstance or a “turning point” in social history in which many union leaders want to believe.
You should have seen, on the evening of January 10, the solemn faces of Laurent Berger (CFDT) in the center, surrounded by Philippe Martinez (CGT) and Frédéric Souillot (FO), then the leaders of the CFE-CGC, the CFTC, of Unsa and Solidaires. Not one was missing and such a photo had never taken place. It was a few hours after the Prime Minister’s announcements and the place chosen owed nothing to chance. It was in this Paris Labor Exchange, located a stone’s throw from the Place de la République, that the call for unions to join the student movement was launched on May 12, 1968. The meaning of the symbol and an unusually precise organization.