Their renewable strikes hit key sectors. In energy as in transport, mobilization across France is just beginning, the same for garbage collectors. At least, this is how the most determined employee unions understand it, strike funds being set up to compensate for the resulting loss of wages.
According to them, it is a question of increasing the pressure on the government over time, rather than waiting for occasional demonstrations against its pension reform project. To that of March 7, “historical” by its magnitude, in the eyes of the organizers, will follow a seventh meeting in the street, Saturday, March 11.
In energy, “fight HQs are settling in”
From dawn on March 7, the Gonfreville-l’Orcher refinery (Seine-Maritime) set the tone: the employees voted for the extension of the strike, at least until Friday 10. Same decision in the others TotalEnergies facilities. “The leapfrog days will largely not be enough in the face of a fighting government, which makes this reform an important political issue”, believes Eric Sellini, CGT federal secretary for chemical industries, in the Parisian procession.
On Tuesday, blockages prevented shipments of petroleum products from seven refineries in mainland France, the strikers announced. Those of TotalEnergies, but also those of Esso-ExxonMobil and Petroineos. “The end of the week will lead to an already very degraded situation at the national level, assures Mr. Sellini, also union coordinator at TotalEnergies. Whether energy or transport, these professional fields structure the economy. If they stop, everything stops. » For now, according to him, “The support of the population is there, in the demonstration, the population is with us”.
Among electricians and gas operators, the CGT is pleased to have “hit hard on March 7”. The strikers said they had their hands on 21 gigawatts (GW) of power (nuclear, thermal and hydropower plants) – the equivalent of around 20 nuclear reactors.
The pension reform project concerns them all the more as it plans to put an end to their special scheme, and therefore to attack their status. On Tuesday, power cuts affected Annonay (Ardèche), a town whose labor minister, Olivier Dussopt, was the socialist mayor (2008-2017).
In the EDF group, about half of the employees went on strike on March 7: 55.3% from a union source, 46.7% according to management. “The time is now for renewal: the “struggle HQs” are settling in companies to hold out over time”says the CGT mines-energy federation, which is also preparing, on Thursday, a day of“initiatives and actions of all kinds throughout the territory”.
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