French left stages street showdown over Macron reforms
PARIS: Several thousand demonstrators rallied to a call Saturday by firebrand leftist politician Jean-Luc Melenchon to join a protest in Paris against President Emmanuel Macron’s sweeping reforms of the labor code.
Melenchon was leading the march through the streets of the French capital on a bright sunny afternoon, with the crowd shouting “resistance, resistance” and no to “a social coup d’etat.”
It marks the third in a series of nationwide protests and comes a day after Macron signed his landmark reforms into law using a fasttracked procedure that avoided a lengthy parliamentary debate.
The changes to the labor code, which runs to around 3,400 pages in some editions, give small businesses more flexibility to negotiate pay and conditions with their staff, instead of being bound by national agreements.
They also make it easier to lay off employees and cap compensation awards for unfair dismissal while also giving higher payouts to workers made redundant.
Macron argues the changes — the cornerstone of his program aimed at boosting entrepreneurship — will help bring down stubbornly high unemployment of 9.6 percent.
Melenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed party has accused Macron of unraveling decades of hard-won social gains.
Zabou Hervieu, 48, came by coach from Brittany to the demonstration.
“I am here for my daughter. She’s 10. Will there still be real jobs with good salaries when she’s grown?,” she said, leaning on a walking stick due to back and knee problems.
The left has also come out swinging against Macron’s plans to cut housing subsidies and reduce the scope of a wealth tax, claiming it as proof that the centrist is a closet right-winger.
“France has never had so many billionaires and millionaires. Why is it always the workers who have to tighten their belts?,” demanded Louis Bousquet, 33, unemployed and sporting a Mao cap.