Ski lift operators join battle against French pension reforms by striking over half term
HALF-TERM ski holidays in France are facing disruption after lift operators announced “unlimited” strikes in resorts over Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms.
The two main French unions representing lift and tow operators and seasonal workers filed for open-ended strikes starting on Tuesday to coincide with the second day of mass protests against the president’s plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
“We have decided to call for a strike during the February holidays because demands are better heeded during this period,” said Eric Becker of the Force Ouvrière union. The other main union, Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), also called for “especially strong action” during the Ski World Cup at Courchevel and Méribel in mid-march.
In an apparent attempt not to scare customers away entirely, unions say not all lifts, tows and cable cars in the Alps and Pyrenees will be blocked at once. Instead, they intend to stage rolling partial stoppages across the resorts.
Pascal de Thiersant, director of the
Trois Vallées ski park in Savoie, said: “After almost two years of Covid, then the energy problem, the unions want to pile it on again. That’s really shooting themselves in the foot.”
Last Thursday, all of France’s main unions united for the first time in 12 years to stage a day of mass strikes in which at least 1.2 million people took to the streets over the pension reforms.
Despite the show of force, Mr Macron is sticking to his plan which goes before parliament in March.
However, he now faces growing dissent among MPS within his centrist Renaissance party and its allies.
Galvanised by mass action, unionists on Monday also pledged to step in to help bakers in Marseille who are struggling to pay rising electricity prices.
The southern port’s CGT Energie branch called on members to rig the electricity meters of any bakers “they meet” in order to halve their bills.
“In concrete terms, that means playing with the meter so that bakers can have a rate that is either 50 per cent or 60 per cent free,” Renaud Henry, a union leader told RMC radio. He confessed the initiative was “totally illegal”.