According to the Interior Ministry, 1.12 million people demonstrated nationwide, 80,000 of them in Paris. The general secretary of the trade union federation CGT, Philippe Martinez, estimated the number of demonstrators across France at “more than two million”. According to the CGT, 400,000 people demonstrated in Paris.
CFDT leader Laurent Berger said the mobilization “is beyond what we expected”.
There were isolated riots in central Paris. Protesters threw bottles, trash cans and smoke grenades at police officers, who responded with tear gas, AFP journalists reported. In the east of the city, a group of young demonstrators also clashed with the security forces in the evening. The police reported almost 40 arrests.
More than 200 protests took place across the country on Thursday, most of which remained peaceful. “Macron wants us to die at work,” said Hamidou, a 43-year-old garbage collector who attended the Paris demonstration. “Some of my colleagues get up at 3 a.m. We can’t work until 64,” he said.
Béatrice, who has been drawing her pension since January, said: “I counted contributions for more than 40 years to get a tiny pension now.” Posters read: “Metro-Arbeit-Friedhof”.
“It’s not so much about me because I’m a manager, I started working when I was 25, so even without the reform I’ll retire at 65,” said 36-year-old Damien Mathieu, who works in the IT industry works and demonstrates in Toulouse in south-west France. He took to the streets out of solidarity, “because it’s a (…) unjust reform that severely disadvantages the working class.”
“When all unions agree, which is rare, then it shows how big the problem is,” CGT union leader Martinez told Public Sénat. The eight largest unions had jointly called for the strike. “A lot of people who don’t usually take to the streets are there this time,” CFDT boss Berger told broadcaster BFM.
In protest, employees of the state electricity supplier EDF reduced electricity production by at least twice the consumption of the city of Paris. At the energy company TotalEnergies, between 70 and 100 percent of the employees went on strike at most locations, according to union information. The transport system was also heavily struck, there were hardly any regional trains and only a few high-speed trains.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced the main lines of the pension reform last week. Macron had already tried in 2019 to simplify the complicated French pension system and enforce that French people work longer. This had led to the longest wave of protests since the 1968 student revolt. The reform project was then initially put on hold because of the corona pandemic.
With the reform, the government wants to secure the long-term financing of the pension system. The pension fund is currently showing a plus, but the government expects a deficit of 14 billion euros by 2030. According to the OECD, the pension system is currently costing France around 14 percent of its economic output.
Therefore, the retirement age is to be raised from 62 to 64 years. Originally, Macon had called 65 years as a goal. There should continue to be special regulations for people who started working very early and for those in particularly strenuous jobs. At the same time, the minimum pension is to be increased to 1,200 euros.
The government also wants to ensure that more seniors than before remain in the workforce. At the end of 2021, only 36 percent of those aged 60 to 64 were employed.
The draft law is to be presented in the cabinet next week and then debated in the National Assembly. The trade unions have announced a new nationwide protest day for January 31st.