Unions prepare to ‘paralyze France’ Tuesday resuming the massive protests against the pension reform of the liberal president Emmanuel Macron, who they accuse of “remaining deaf” to popular rejection.

“I call on workers, citizens, pensioners to demonstrate en masse,” said Laurent Berger, leader of the CFDT union on Monday. “The president cannot remain deaf,” he added on France Inter radio.

In some cities the first effects of the strike are already beginning to be felt. Since Sunday evening, there have already been checkpoints at logistics centers and at the accesses to some large cities, which resulted in traffic jams on the access roads from Lille (north) or Rouen (northwest) this morning.

From 19:00 local time, the strikes will go into effect on trains. The state railway company SNCF has already announced it tomorrow it will cancel 80% of high-speed trains (TGV) and virtually all other conventional long-distance trains.

On international lines, there will be no service on the Paris-Barcelona corridor or on lines between France and Germany; only one return train on connections with Italy, and 20% of the usual ones on connections with Switzerland.

Two thirds of the Eurostar will work with London and also two-thirds of the Thalys going from Paris to Brussels, some of which then continued on to the Netherlands or Germany.

In the suburbs of Paris, depending on the lines, between one third and one fifth of the usual trains will be maintained, and in parallel in the capital’s metro, only the normal service will be maintained on the two automatic lines, 1 and 2. 14. The others will go to barely half throttle during peak hours.

Cancellation of 20 to 30% of flights

The controllers’ strike will lead to the cancellation of 20% of flights at Charles de Gaulle and 30% at the other Paris airport, as well as those of Beauvais, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Marseille, Montpellier, Nice and Toulouse.

In fact, the first mobilizations to heat the environment began on Friday in the energy sector, with the lowering of electricity in some plants over the weekend, which has not led to cuts in supply for customers so far.

Massive disapproval of pension cuts

Two out of three French people, according to polls, oppose it his plans to delay the retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030 and bring forward to 2027 the obligation to contribute 43 years (and not 42, as now) to collect a full pension.

But raising one of the lowest retirement ages in Europe seeks, according to the government, to avoid a deficit in the pension fund. “We will achieve the goal” of a balanced system by 2030, its spokesman Olivier Véran told France 2.

Since its unveiling in January, unions have staged large mobilisations, including the largest in three decades on January 31 –1.27 to 2.8 million people–, without making the government back down.

From Tuesday the mobilization “accelerates the pace” in the face of an “increasingly tough” position of the government, the leader of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, told the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.

The railway service in France and public transport in Paris, key to the economy of the capital, they announce themselves very upset by the disruptions, which the unions hope to extend beyond Tuesday.

“There will be difficult days (…) It is likely that things will not stop on the evening of March 7 or the morning of March 8,” warned the Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, on France 3. The government encourages those who can telework.

The unions have also called for the “total closure” of schools and high schools. Paralyzed works, closed shops, open tolls or blocked roads are also part of the planned action programme.

Truck drivers have already started their strike, causing traffic jams in cities like Lille (north) or Rouen (northeast), and, since last Friday, workers in the energy sector have already caused production drops in several nuclear power plants.

While the goal is to shut down the economy, the economic impact of the strikes will be “limited”according to the analysts of the ING bank, for which, even in the event of long blocks, it will not exceed 0.2 percentage points of GDP.

The last time the French managed to paralyze a pension reform was in 1995. Unions paralyzed rail and metro services for three weeks and managed to maintain massive public support.

Even the majority of French people now support the principle of strikes extendable (56%) and the union goal of “paralyzing France” (59%) to force the government to back down, according to an Elabe poll released on Monday.

The project, however, continues its parliamentary process. After passing through the Assembly (lower house), the plenary session of the Senate (upper house) since last Thursday has been discussing the proposals that move forward thanks to the support of the right-wing opposition.

The government has chosen a controversial parliamentary procedure that limits the time for debate and allows it to apply its provisions if both houses of Parliament have not approved the same text by 26 March. The Assembly was unable to vote.

International Women’s Day, scheduled for Wednesday, could also see a strong mobilization, especially when opponents of the project believe that women are one of the losing groups of the reform.

Source: AFP