Macron: Pension reform can change
Union warns of strikes enduring to Christmas
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron suggested Thursday that he was ready to make changes to his plans to overhaul the pension system as a union warned that nationwide strikes and protests could continue unabated until Christmas.
Labor strikes crippled France’s train services and the Paris metro for an eighth day.
Tensions flared in several cities as largely peaceful demonstrations were staged across the country. Police fired tear gas at protesters in Nantes and Lille, and activists set vehicles on fire in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
Speaking at his arrival at a European Union summit in Brussels a day after Prime Minister Edouard Philippe detailed the government’s pension measure, Macron called for opening new talks with labor unions. The government “has made a proposal, and now dialogue must open,” he said.
Unions have rejected fresh proposals by the government to stagger the rollout of the plan that would require France’s youngest workers to stay on the job two years longer, until the age of 64, to be eligible for a full pension.
“No Christmas break unless the government comes to its senses,” Laurent Brun of the CGT union (General Work Confederation) warned Thursday.
Workers across many public sectors — including teachers, doctors, nurses, railway personnel and garbage collectors — are participating in the nationwide strikes.
The National Syndicate of High School Teachers said it was “stepping up” its actions against changes it branded “unacceptable” with fresh protests Thursday across major French cities.
The unions’ quick dismissal of the proposal the government made Wednesday signals that labor leaders were serious when they billed the strikes as “unlimited.”
Macron’s party has the majority in Parliament, which is expected to approve the proposal at the start of next year.
The strikes threaten to mirror similar ones in 1995 that lasted more than three weeks and ended with the proposed pension reforms being scrapped.
Many French people and the unions leading the strikes fear the new system will force people to work longer for smaller pensions.