The bill on pension reform supported by Emmanuel Macron is still being examined by the French Senate, and several of its provisions have been adopted, but the mobilisation against the proposed law continues. On Tuesday, March 7th, demonstrations and strikes set the country alight, while a new day of protests is scheduled for Saturday, March 11th.
According to Le Figaro, 1.28 million demonstrators across the country have been making their voices heard. The unions hailed it as a historic mobilisation in terms of its scale. However, the strike rates by sector indicate that previous records were not broken. The SNCF (the national rail company) counted 39% of their members on strike compared to 46% on January 19th. EDF (Électricité de France) had 41.5% strikers, compared to 46.5% on January 19th. The national education system also had less success in mobilising. The public service, on the other hand, experienced a renewed commitment to the strike.
Some sectors, strongly mobilised, have forceful means of pressure: this is the case in the energy sector. Fuel shipments were blocked on the morning of Tuesday, March 7th, at the exit of all the refineries in France (TotalEnergies, Esso-ExxonMobil, and Petroineos), the CGT-Chimie union said. France has seven refineries in all. If the blockade continues, it could lead to the shutdown of the refineries, which would have no room to store the fuel produced on site, and to shortages at filling stations, as happened last October. In the gas sector, three of France’s four LNG terminals were shut down for seven days by the unions.
But on the whole, it was a half-hearted success: despite their promise, the unions did not fully succeed in bringing the country to a ‘standstill,’ which makes their struggle with the government more complex. Time is running out, and the bill examined in the Senate has won some initial victories. The Senators adopted the famous article 7—which extends the retirement age from 62 to 64 years—on the night of Wednesday, March 8th.
Opponents are starting to worry because, for the moment, the government does not seem to want to bend, adapt, or backtrack. The battle is not only played out in the streets but also at the level of national representation.
In the National Assembly, the left-wing coalition of the NUPES and the Rassemblement National vigorously opposed the bill, despite their disagreements. In the Senate, the situation is different. The upper house is dominated by Les Républicains, who intend to give an image of managerial ‘responsibility’ and present a generally united front in favour of the proposal—whereas, in the Assembly, there are dissident voices within the governmental right-wing group. The government is counting heavily on the right-wing Senators to pass its bill and thus counteract the effects of the popular protests.
In the press, articles showing the limits of the bill, or the manipulations in the government’s communication, are multiplying. The main positive argument put forward by the government to make the law popular among the public—the introduction of a €1,200 pension for all—has now been widely dismantled and attacked for its fallacy, forcing the minister of labour to make a public correction. Out of the eligible population, only “10,000 (to) 20,000 people will cross the €1,200 threshold,” Olivier Dussopt was forced to admit, after being attacked by the Left. It is not without reason the Left launches accusations of lies and amateurism: the government has indeed previously claimed, in front of the deputies or the press, estimates ranging from two million, to 40,000, to 200,000 French people concerned.
International Women’s Rights Day on Wednesday, March 8th, allowed opponents of the law to focus particularly on the disadvantages that women will suffer as a result of the reform. Indeed, by combining work and family life, women are more likely to have spotty professional careers—due to maternity leave—or to hold part-time jobs to take care of their children. In order to obtain a full pension, they risk having their retirement age significantly postponed to make up for the shortfalls in their younger years. On the contrary, if they retire at 64, they won’t get a full pension, because they will be penalised for the time they didn’t work to raise their children.
Today, the political situation is therefore complex. The bill is more unpopular than ever in public opinion. It crystallises a certain number of resentments accumulated against the president and his government. It is progressing in the Senate but still has to go back to the National Assembly where dark clouds are gathering.
The government is accused of being impervious to social dialogue, and tensions are mounting within the majority and in the Chamber. On Tuesday, March 7th, Minister of Justice Éric Dupont-Moretti disgraced himself by making a rude and obscene gesture to the boss of the Les Républicains MPs—an outburst Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne could have done without. The subject of the dispute between the two men goes beyond the debate on pension reform. But the justice minister’s outburst symbolises, in this context, everything that many French people reproach Emmanuel Macron and his servants for: a brutality and a flippancy that reveal all the contempt that these rulers have for the people they are supposed to lead.
