The CGT calls on the French to mobilize for wages and pensions. A strategy contested by the other representative plants.
It’s an open secret: the date of the new social term, for the CGT, is always two weeks after the Fête de l’Huma… Tradition respected again this year. This September 29, the Montreuil plant will be in the streets for a day of strikes and demonstrations against the backdrop of the issue of wages and pensions. At her side, in the head square behind the banners, will join her the leaders of Solidaires, the FSU and youth organizations (Unef, Fidl, MNL and the Voix lycéenne). But no other representative union.
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If they are not fooled by the calculations of the agenda of the second central of France, its counterparts would have, for once, liked to be consulted before stopping the calendar of the festivities. “Philip, you know what? As long as you are secretary general, you can give us the date of the return to school until 2035. That way, we will know it and we will be able to buy the flags, like the schoolbags for the return to school“Launched, ironically, to Philippe Martinez, the leader of a competing power plant.
Counter-programming
But not enough to discourage the first of the CGT, who says he is confident. “When I meet activists, I am reassured. Nobody asks me what’s going on on the 29th, they all seem aware and ready“replies the secretary general of the plant. And to add that if the other confederations do not call for demonstrations, walkouts will take place this Thursday in certain sectors and companies at the call of their local unions.
«I have on my desk a pile the size of a phone book made up of press clippings that list all the sites where employees are on strike at the call of the local CFE-CGC sections.brags besides François Hommeril, the president of the central of the executives, who recognizes to have limited capacities of mobilization. This obliges us to be particularly selective about the slogan of the event. We had warned in the summer that the one chosen for September 29 was too general.»
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The CGT had nevertheless made an effort. Accustomed to lengthy slogans, she had just reworked her punchline and added pension reform to the list of targets to fight: “Raise wages, not the retirement age“. But it was not enough…
At FO, Frédéric Souillot preferred to stay back from a demonstration which tended to become politicized following the support of the Attac association in early September. Unsurprisingly, the CFDT focused on its own back-to-school counter-operation, which ends this Thursday evening. Three days oftakeaway answers», which aim to attract future members by showing them the advantages of its model based on service unionism.
The Unsa, however present in March during the mobilizations for purchasing power, chose this time to abstain. “I think that this demonstration will have a militant utility, ie it will make speak about the subject of the wages. But for us, it is necessary to privilege actions with the whole of the inter-union “, says Laurent Escure, its general secretary. All the organizations must also meet on October 3 to decide what to do next. By then, the government will be out of the woods on pensions and each central will know what to expect. And it’s a safe bet that they will unanimously call for a united response, relegating the mobilization day of September 29 to the rank of dress rehearsal.