Paris, March 7. The strikers on Tuesday blocked the exit of fuel in all the refineries of France, as well as the circulation in the access roads of certain cities in a day of strikes and demonstrations which promise to be massive to force the government to reconsider its pension reform. .
“The objective is for the government to withdraw its reform project”, repeated the secretary general of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Philippe Martínez, in an interview this morning on radio France Info, in which he stressed that ‘with this sixth day of protests has entered “a new phase”.
Martínez, leader of the second central in the country, stressed that the common motto of all the unions in this new phase that begins today is “to paralyze the country”.
This means – he specified – disruptions in transport, in electricity, in gas, in garbage collection but also “strikes in the private sector”.
Asked about the extension of the strikes on Wednesday and the following days, Martínez clarified that it is not he who decides, but the workers of each company. But at the same time, he checked that it had already been voted on, for example, at the SNCF, in energy or in the ports.
Above all, he stressed that the responsibility lies with the government which “provokes the social movement” by turning a deaf ear to “91% of workers, who say that this is not a good reform”.
Executive Emmanuel Macron’s bill, currently under parliamentary instruction – currently in the Senate -, provides in particular for the postponement of the minimum retirement age from the current 62 years to 64 years and an acceleration of the extension of the contribution period which gives the right to a full-rate pension up to the age of 43.
About 320 demonstrations are called today throughout France, at which the police intelligence services expect between 1.1 and 1.4 million people. That is to say that the 1.27 million of January 31 could be exceeded (again according to the Ministry of the Interior), which so far has been the most massive.
Strikes are becoming very visible on public transport. SNCF had to cancel an average of 80% of high-speed trains (TGV) and virtually all other conventional long-distance trains.
On international lines, there is no service on the Paris-Barcelona corridor or on the lines between France and Germany; a single return train on the connections with Italy, and 20% of the usual trains on the connections with Switzerland.
Two thirds of the Eurostars with London work and also two thirds of the Thalys which go from Paris to Brussels. In the vicinity of Paris, along the lines between a third and a fifth of the usual convoys. In the capital’s metro, there is only normal service on the two automatic lines, 1 and 14. The others run barely at half speed and only during rush hour.
In air transport, the controllers’ strike led 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.