Macron reforms unleash strikes, protests
PARIS: An estimated 200,000 protesters took to the streets of France on Thursday in a showdown between trade unions and President Emmanuel Macron that could be decisive for his reform agenda.
Seven unions representing staff in the public sector led strikes and protests, and a third of railway workers walked out to join the demonstrations against 40-yearold Macron’s bid to shake up the French state.
Around 200,000 people demonstrated nationwide, according to police figures, including 49,000 in Paris. The CGT union, the biggest in the public sector, estimated the total turnout at over half a million.
Fewer than half of the country’s high- speed TGV trains were running and flights, schools, daycare centres, libraries and other public services such as rubbish collection were also affected.
Baptiste Colin, a 22-yearold engineering student who demonstrated in Paris, accused the government of wanting to “destroy public services” – a sentiment echoed by Marine Bruneau, a municipal worker.
“They seem to consider that in France ... the private sector can do everything and that we don’t need public servants like me. But France needs us. If we’re not here, the country is not ok,” she said.
Police fired teargas and water cannon in central Paris during sporadic clashes between security forces and groups of masked youths who appeared to be far-left anarchists. But while commuters faced problems in some areas, particularly in the suburbs of Paris, the impact of the strikes was low by historic French standards.
March 22 had been chosen deliberately to echo the start of student protests in 1968 that paralysed the country and culminated in notorious street battles between police and demonstrators in May of that year.
“The real question for today is how many people are going to join the action?” hard-left leader JeanLuc Melenchon told reporters in Paris as he arrived with other political leaders at the Paris rally.
Thousands turned out for protests in major cities such as Marseille, Lyon and Nantes, but the numbers country-wide were around the same for a previous demonstration by public sector workers last October. And they were far off the giant demonstrations of the last 25 years, such as 1995, 2003 or 2010 that saw more than a million people in the street on each occasion.
Political scientist Dominique Reynie from Sciences Po university in Paris said estimated turn- out of 50,000 in the capital was a “stinging failure. ( But) that doesn’t mean that we won’t have more people in the future.” — AFP