The showdown over pension reform continues. Emmanuel Macron did not succeed in convincing the unions during his speech on Monday evening. The secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, thus considered that there was “nothing concrete” in the prospects opened up by the President of the Republic, who notably proposed a “new pact for life at work”. .
Regarding the prospects “which are given, it’s a bit of a speech on the method for a tenth time but nothing concrete”, criticized Laurent Berger. “The appeasement, it had to be done on the subject which created the social conflagration, the pension reform”, he added on BFMTV. “We did not need to hear that he had heard the anger and that it was supposedly on other levers”, he was annoyed, while Emmanuel Macron spoke of anger in the face of a “work that no longer allows you to live well”.
A speech that “could have been made by ChatGPT”
“The CFDT, one day or another, will discuss. We will discuss working conditions, salaries, but we want a minimum of decency in this relationship. We do not answer when we are whistled, ”continued the leader of the first French union. “By May 1 there will be no meetings”, and the CFDT will not go to the invitation of Emmanuel Macron this Tuesday, he reaffirmed.
The story was the same at the CGT. Secretary General Sophie Binet said on LCI to have the feeling that the President of the Republic “did not hear what the millions of demonstrators told him and repeated” and strikers. “This speech could have been made by ChatGPT. There was a very disembodied side,” she quipped.
“To turn the page, you have to offer us concrete things” and “in the projects he lists for us, I see either very concrete things that are deeply divisive”, such as the reform of vocational high schools or the RSA, or points ” totally obscure and very general” such as on salaries. “So the mirror with larks, it’s good, we’ve already had enough of it. There, the account is clearly not there, ”she added.
A “smoky speech”, criticizes the CGE-CGC
“Stop smoking, we will not negotiate anything with Emmanuel Macron except the withdrawal of the retirement law”, for his part reacted on Twitter the co-delegate general of Solidaires, Simon Duteil. “It is the usual hitch of the sack race of smoky speech”, castigated on the same social network the boss of the CFE-CGC, François Hommeril.
In a joint press release Monday evening, the inter-union also considered that the words of the President of the Republic “demonstrate that he has still not understood the anger which is expressed in the country”. She therefore again called for making “May 1 a day of massive, unitary and popular mobilization” against the pension reform.