Decisive day for the mobilization against the pension reform. The objective of unions is clear: to gather more demonstrators than previous events, which led to another since the beginning of the year. On 27 May, between 395,000 and one million people (according to the police and unions respectively) took to the streets.
Since then, times have changed. The government has announced plans for pension reform last week. A text that unions have unanimously considered "unfair." Guests this Thursday on RTL, the secretary general of the CFDT, Francois Chérèque, regretted "being faced with a country that is willing to change, but change in the wrong direction." Therefore, he hopes an "exceptional mobilization" for this inter-action day.
"The hope was to surpass the one million demonstrators.I think that this figure will be exceeded is obvious, "said François Chérèque, saying that" perhaps two million people "will demonstrate this Thursday. And this, especially since "more than 200 gatherings" are already planned across France. And calls for strikes in the business (as in Saint-Gobain, Michelin, Total, Airbus, BNP Paribas, L'Oreal, France Telecom, La Poste …) have followed since the beginning of the week.
At the Post, some 19.86% of staff were on strike Thursday morning, said the Directorate in a statement against 12.80% last May 27. For its part, the direction of the station has recorded 39.8% of strikers among the railway workers in mid-morning, against 23.2% during the last day of action interprofessional.
The teachers were 31.9% to strike Thursday in schools and 10.3% in secondary schools (including 18.7% in colleges), according to figures from the Ministry of Education published in mid-morning. The schools were little affected, the degree requires organization. On the day of 23 March, the mobilization in the primary had reached 29.8% of strikers, the ministry said.
Another sector to have mobilized public broadcasting had a strong participation in the strike on Thursday. Several television and radio have been deleted throughout the morning. The directions of France Televisions and Radio France, however, had not reported figures to the mid-day. Finally, the publication of several regional newspapers has been disrupted. To major national newspapers will not seem morrow Fridays.
For the secretary general of the CGT, Bernard Thibault, the one million demonstrators should be passed this afternoon. "If that's not enough, we have the sequence of ideas, this is not the end of a cycle, only the announcement of a bill," he warned in a interview with the newspaper 20 Minutes. "I've seen governments fall as safe as this one, particularly on the subject of pensions, has finally found the union leader.
If Nicolas Sarkozy pledged on Tuesday to be "tuned" during discussions with the unions this summer, and it spoke of "possible developments" of the reform bill late last week, some key points text does not change as raising the legal age to 62 years in 2018. And, whatever the mobilization this Thursday."The mobilization will certainly strong, we expect, we do not fear," warned the Labour Minister, Eric Woerth.
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