Refusing to enter into the executive’s post-crisis “agenda”, all the unions have expressed their “determination” to continue the fight against the increase in the legal retirement age to 64 years. The inter-union is betting on the traditional May 1 meeting which it wishes to transform into an “exceptional and popular mobilization day” against the heart of the reform, retirement at 64. The boss of the CFDT wishes “that on May 1, ”we break the house” in number of demonstrators in the street”. “On the decrees, the concrete implementation of the measures, we are not going to let go of the government”, he told the Parisian.
The inter-union declined an invitation Tuesday at the Elysée. The ultra-rapid publication of the reform, while the inter-union, united for three months of protest, “had solemnly asked” the president to “not promulgate the law”, is “totally shameful”, denounced the general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet. Emmanuel Macron “is in the process of becoming the president of chaos” and “opens a boulevard to the National Rally”, she lashed out. “The contempt returned to the workers will have been constant”, reacted his counterpart at the CFDT Laurent Berger.
Other mobilizations before May 1
Hardly had the reform been promulgated, violence again punctuated a demonstration in Rennes on Saturday where businesses were vandalized, two cars burned in addition to clashes with the police. In Paris, 300 people marched in a calm atmosphere in the 19th arrondissement, with cries in particular of “Paris standing up, rise up”.
In the meantime, the four SNCF unions announced “a day of expression of railway anger” on Thursday. And the CGT mentioned actions in all sectors on Thursday as well, as well as on April 28. The 12th day of mobilization last Thursday had delivered the second lowest mobilization score since the beginning of the movement (380,000 demonstrators according to the Ministry of the Interior, 1.5 million according to the CGT).