After a first day of mobilization deemed successful, the trade union and political front must now succeed in its second meeting to increase pressure on the government. With several objectives: to bring new professional categories to the streets, to bet on youth and to exploit new errors of the executive.
Further increase the counters to force the government to back down on pension reform. After a first day of mobilization on January 19, one of the most important in the past 30 years, the unions and the left want to exceed one million French people in the street and intend to build on the lessons of previous strikes.
• Keep unions united
For the first time since 2010, the unions are united against the executive. The left has also rallied its forces against retirement at 64. Something to recall the images of 1995 when, during the very first demonstration against the end of the special regimes, the bosses of FO and the CGT shook hands and marched side by side for the first time since 1947 .
“We almost have a handshake at 8 and the CFDT does not suggest any area of weakness. It’s a very strong signal”, assures the communist deputy Sébastien Jumel to BFMTV.com.
If the unions have less influence than in the past, they retain the ability to shut down entire sectors of the economy such as refineries and transport. The CGT thus counted up to 100% of strikers in oil depots on January 26.
“Mobilizations in the street are good. But what matters above all is the strike with paralysis in the country which can put Emmanuel Macron in great difficulty. And that, the unions always know how to do, even more when they all agree”, says Jean-Marie Pernot, political scientist and specialist in trade unionism.
• Mobilize new sectors and youth
If several parts of the French economy had already joined the demonstration of January 19, new actors, until now little mobilized, enter the dance like the air sector. In 1995, the movement changed during the second day of mobilization, when the RATP joined the protests.
“It’s a very powerful signal because when you block Orly, you impact both senior executives who have business trips and the delivery of medicines”, wants to believe the deputy La France insoumise Hadrien Clouet.
With a hope for some on the left: that the craftsmen who often started working early and therefore particularly concerned by the decline in the starting age, join the protests. Butchers and bakers have mobilized strongly in recent weeks after their bills have soared.
Managing to put young people on the street is also a strong hope of massiveizing the movement.
“It’s not easy to get young people onto the streets, but when they are there, it’s difficult to get them to come home. You don’t have the question of less pay like for employees” , decrypts Raymond Soubie, the former social adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée.
For the moment, the mobilization organized by youth associations and LFI on January 21 has only brought together 14,000 participants according to the count of the independent firm Occurence and 150,000 according to the organizers.
• Convey a discourse that goes beyond the question of pensions
To succeed in registering the movement in the long term and in massifying it, many are those on the left to think about watchwords which go beyond the question of the decline in the age of departure.
“We feel that the question goes much further than working longer. We are on the question of the distribution of wealth in our country, of the feeling that we are always hitting on the same people at a time when people do not care. come out more financially. We have to manage to make people feel that we are fighting for that”, analyzes the communist deputy Sébastien Jumel.
On the benches of the left, many consider that the young people who took part in the processions of January 19 with broader slogans such as the end of Parcoursup which recently opened its platform, student precariousness or even global warming, have already paved the way.
“Students say to themselves: ‘OK, they want us to work more with polluted air, 3 degrees more, all with empty pockets’. We can clearly see that projecting ourselves into a desirable future goes far beyond the question of work”, seeks to underline the rebellious Louis Boyard.
• Banking on government mistakes
After a communication wanted by Emmanuel Macron and Élisabeth Borne, the executive seems to have tripped over the carpet. While the executive has constantly insisted on the “justice” of the reform, Franck Riester, the Minister for Relations with Parliament, admitted that women would be “a little impacted” by the decline of the retirement age.
The Prime Minister may have denounced a “false trial”, she hardly convinced. The proof in figures: 72% of French people reject the pension reform project, according to an Elabe poll for BFMTV. The statistic represents a jump of six points from the measurement taken a week ago … and 13 points from the gauge established two weeks earlier.
“We have a government which says itself that the reform is not fair. We are not in a communication error but in the truth. And the more the debate will progress on the sets, in the Assembly, the more we will see the reality of this bill”, observes Fabrice Angei, in charge of employment issues at the CGT.
Who adds: “Franck Riester, this time, is mobilizing women. But a clumsiness from the Minister of National Education can anger teachers even more, a dumpling from François Braun at Health with caregivers too. All this pushes new people to take to the streets”.
In the ranks of the unions, two sentences of Alain Juppé who had set fire to the powder in 1995 remained in the memories. “If two million people take to the streets, my government will not resist it” he had first launched before saying “straight in his boots” in the face of the scale of future mobilizations.
“We feel that many factors can amplify mobilization. But the one we have our hands on and which depends only on us is communication. Let’s listen and especially not the first in the class”, urges a Macronie executive.
“We knew that this reform would be difficult”, tried for his part to clear the Minister of Labor on our antenna this Friday.
