Posted Apr 6, 2023, 7:32 PMUpdated on Apr 6, 2023, 8:23 PM
“Klaxon”, intimate a sign. Motorists and bus drivers run with a smile while the slogans attached to the social movement against the pension reform are displayed on pieces of cardboard: “16 64 is a beer, not a career”, “You put us a 64, we re-May a 68”.
Joyful atmosphere in front of the Concorcet high school, next to the Saint Lazare station in Paris, for the eleventh meeting given by the unions against the pension reform this Thursday. But Wednesday’s meeting between union leaders and Elisabeth Borne at Matignon, which came to an end after the Prime Minister’s refusal to withdraw the reform, did not cause a surge in mobilization.
Declining attendance
This was relaunched on March 23 by the use of 49.3 to have the reform definitively adopted by the deputies, bringing together 1.1 million demonstrators according to the Ministry of the Interior and 3.5 million according to the CGT. The downward movement reignited on March 28 continued on Thursday. According to the Ministry of the Interior, 570,000 people marched in France. However, this is still higher than the lowest attendance recorded against the pension reform, on February 16, when the police had noted 440,000 demonstrators throughout France.
In Paris, while transport in the Ile-de-France region was little disturbed, the police counted 57,000 demonstrators, the CGT announcing 400,000. Clashes broke out on the sidelines of the parade with the start of a fire at La Rotonde, the brasserie where Emmanuel Macron had celebrated his qualification for the second round of the presidential election in 2017. But this time again, the slippages were boundaries.
Rate of strikers stable
In the provinces, the crowd was also down with 3,600 people in Orléans, 5,500 people in Le Havre, 8,500 people in Rennes or 15,000 in Nantes and 10,000 in Marseille, according to the authorities. The rates of strikers in the civil service remained in the same waters as on March 28, with at midday 6.5% of civil servants who had stopped working, 3.9% in the territorial and 5.9% in the hospital sector.
The secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, recognized it: the figures of the mobilization are “not the most important since the beginning” of the social movement which had started very strong, with more than a million demonstrators according to the police on January 19. Participating in her first demonstration as general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, denounced a “bunkerized” government, judging that her “ability to lead the country is called into question”.
The image of trade unions restored
The time is in any case not to put away the banners when the Constitutional Council must decide on April 14 on the pension reform. The inter-union decided on a twelfth day of strikes and demonstrations the day before, Thursday April 13.
Will there be a new jump? It is already established that the social movement will have restored the image of the unions. While they remain skeptical about their ability to move the lines, 52% of French people believe that trade unions are an “element of dialogue in society”, with a clear premium for unity, according to an Elabe poll for “Les Echos” and the Institut Montaigne published this Thursday.
In a reverse movement, the Head of State’s confidence rating lost 7 points in April in the Elabe barometer for “Les Echos”. Its biggest drop since entering the Elysée Palace. The Prime Minister follows the same trend: in April, her confidence rating lost 4 points, to 22%. Since the entry of Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée, the tenant of Matignon had never fallen so low. Elisabeth Borne wants in any case to show that she remains in the action. She will be in Aveyron on Friday for a trip on the theme of health.
“Building a consensus” is necessary, according to the boss of the IMF
The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, considered Thursday “inevitable” a pension reform in France but this requires according to her to “build a consensus”. For her, “the only way for States to act is to prove relentlessly what this type of reform can bring to everyone, to ensure that it is followed by all and to build a consensus within society”, said she said in an interview with AFP.