Macron Sticks to Pension Reform
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted he wants to press ahead with controversial plans to reform and unify the country’s pension system, but he is open to improvements, he said on Wednesday.
Macron said he was prepared to discuss ways to improve the plans together with the trade unions, the state-run rail company SNCF, and the operator of the Paris metro RATP.
The president also reportedly said he hopes that there would be a break in the industrial action for Christmas.
Numerous trade unions have held continuing strikes calling on Macron to back down from the plans, and have increased the pressure on the government by threatening to continue the strikes through Christmas.
Strikes have restricted national rail travel and the Paris metro system for two weeks.
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest against the planned changes.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe plans to meet with representatives from the trade unions and employers’ associations in an attempt to defuse the situation.
On Wednesday, only limited transport services were available in the greater Paris metropolitan area, and many lines were not running at all.
SNCF, the national rail operator, recently promised customers who had already bought tickets for the weekend before Christmas that they would be able to travel.
However, many trains have been cancelled and the service has made numerous changes to timetables.
Similarly, France’s warring trade unions on Wednesday defended their decision to cut power to thousands of homes, companies and even the Bank of France to force a weakened government to drop a wideranging pension reform.
The power cuts added to a sense of chaos in the second week of nationwide strikes that have crippled transport shut schools and brought more than half a million people onto the street against Macron’s reform.
Asked on French radio whether the power cuts, illegal under French law, weren’t a step too far, Philippe Martinez, the Head of the Hardline CGT Union, said the cuts were necessary to force
Macron to back down.
“I understand these workers’ anger. “These are targeted cuts. You’ll understand that spitting on the public service can make some of us angry,” the mustachioed union leader said.
Macron’s transport minister condemned the power cuts, which hit at least 150,000 homes on Tuesday according to the French power grid, and said the government would ask the grid company to file complaints.
“I hear they’re cutting power to CAC 40 companies, prefectures, shopping malls.
“That’s already rather questionable,” Elisabeth Borne said, referring to an index of blue-chip companies on the French stock market.
“But clinics, metro stations, fire brigades and thousands of French people also saw power cuts. This is far from normal ways of striking,” she said.
The hardening union tactics came just as Macron was forced to change the lead negotiator for the reform, naming a lawmaker from his party to replace pension’s tsar JeanPaul Delevoye, who resigned following accusations of conflicts of interest.