At the beginning of the general assembly at the end of track 23 of the Gare de Lyon, Fabien Villedieu, local Sud rail delegate warns: “The speeches must be short to carry out an action afterwards”. After twenty minutes, where union officials once again castigated the pension reform and voted to renew the strike, the hundreds of railway workers headed for the metro. Head to the headquarters of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, in the Opéra Garnier district. The historic Centorial building is the former headquarters of Crédit Lyonnais in Paris.
Shortly before noon, led by Fabien Villedieu, everyone invaded the premises of the pension fund, singing: “We are here, we are here, even if Macron does not want us, we are here” or “Anti, Anti, Anticapitalists! »
The entrance hall fills with smoke. Employees film upstairs while others hurry to leave the building, a bit frightened. A few firecrackers and homemade bombs explode. “We are taking action to give visibility to the social struggle, we are toughening our actions in the face of government contempt, insists Fabien Villedieu. We come to denounce pension funds, symbols of capitalism. Here, there is money to finance our pay-as-you-go pension system! »
Beside him, Berenger Cernon, delegate of the CGT Cheminots, seizes the megaphone in an electric atmosphere. “Rather than take two years of life from the workers, Macron should come and get him here,” he shouted, to the cheers of the hundreds of people gathered.
Several actions of activists
The group, union flags in hand, strolls on the ground floor of the headquarters before coming out, about fifteen minutes later. Without committing degradation.
Fabien Villedieu organizes a short demonstration in the middle of the rue du 4 Septembre. Before the assembled activists then head to Invalides, the starting point of the 11th interprofessional event.
In the morning, the Natixis bank, a subsidiary of Banque Populaire Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE), was also the target of activists. The anti-globalization NGO Attac occupied the lobby of the company’s headquarters in the 13th arrondissement of Paris for two hours, according to publications on the NGO’s Twitter.
The activists carried a banner “tax evasion seriously harms our pensions”. Natixis and four other banks are under investigation by the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF) for suspicion of tax evasion.