/ Europe
AS IT HAPPENED
French strikes against pension reform to continue as unions intensify fight
Issued on: 07/03/2023 – 10:30
Modified: 07/03/2023 – 14:13
Firefighters take part in a demonstration against the French government’s pension reform plan in Paris, as part of the sixth day of national strike and protests, in France, March 7, 2023.
Firefighters take part in a demonstration against the French government’s pension reform plan in Paris, as part of the sixth day of national strike and protests, in France, March 7, 2023. © Sarah Meysonnier, Reuters
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FRANCE 24
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6 min
France was partly brought to a standstill on Tuesday as millions of protesters took to the streets in one of the biggest strike actions yet. Rejecting the government’s proposed pension reform bill, which includes raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 64, workers across all sectors turned out in force to show their disapproval in nation-wide demonstrations. Follow our blog to see how the day’s events unfolded. All times are Paris time (GMT+1).
9:12pm: France to carry on strikes
Strikes against the government’s pension reform bill are to continue until the latter is withdrawn, trade unions said.
The CGT union said workers had voted to prolong strikes at all TotalEnergies sites.
7:58pm: 3.5 million workers on strike across France, trade unions say
Tuesday saw up to 3.5 millon protesters in the streets across the nation according to the CGT trade union.
Meanwhile figures provided by the government show 1.2 millon.
Looking to pile pressure on lawmakers, France’s more hardline unions said there would be rolling strikes which could go on for days, at least in some sectors.
The CGT union said workers had voted to prolong strikes at all TotalEnergies sites.
Trains will continue to be disrupted on Wednesday, as will the Paris metro system, though to a slightly lesser degree than on Tuesday, the SNCF and RATP transportation companies running them said.
Union leaders said will meet in the evening to decide on further steps.
The CFDT, now France’s biggest trade union and generall reform-minded, has not committed to the rolling strikes and has said there could be other forms of protest.
6:55pm: Around ‘700,000 protesters’ in Paris demonstrations
There were around 700,000 protesters in Paris demonstrations today, according to the CGT trade union. The Paris police put the number of demonstrators at 81,000.
Reporting from Paris’s Place d’Italie, the final destination of protesters, FRANCE 24’s Liza Kaminov said the mood is changing.
Watch the report in the video below:
05:00
© France 24
6:28pm: French refining sites are ‘blocked’
France’s eight refining sites are ‘all blocked’, reports FRANCE 24’s Science Editor Shirli Sitbon.
Despite continuous production, protesters have shut the gates to refining sites and “will not let the fuel leave”, she said.
Meanwhile three out of France’s four liquefied natural gas terminals are blocked while output from the country’s nuclear plants has also been cut.
Warning of potential shortages if the strikes were to continue, Sitbon nevertheless said the impact may “not be as drastic” as it was during former strikes as more people are working from home.
Watch the report in the video below:
SCIENCE
03:47
SCIENCE © FRANCE 24
5:25pm: ‘The mood is one of defiance and one of hope’, says FRANCE 24’s Liza Kaminov
Reporting from the streets of Paris where a national strike is currently taking place, FRANCE 24’s Liza Kaminov noted a general atmosphere of hope and determination.
People from all sectors and generations have turned out for the protests as Kaminov pointed to a mix of “elderly, youth, family”, as well as “people coming from the education sector, from the pharmaceutical sector, from the metal industry and also from the aeronautics sector”.
Kaminov also interviewed a PHD student in social sciences, who highlighted the impact of the pension reform bill on the younger generation and on women.
Watch the report in the video below:
French pension standoff: Union stage mass protests over controversial reform
04:02
French pension standoff: Union stage mass protests over controversial reform © France 24
3:22pm: High turnout for Paris strike
FRANCE 24’s Liza Kaminov is reporting from the streets of Paris, where protesters have gathered to express their disapproval of the government’s pension reform plan.
“The turnout is high, and is perhaps even higher than the January 31st protest,” Kaminov said. “Police are saying that in Paris alone there are about 60,000 to 90,000 protestors, but as we’re walking with the crowd this number seems to be increasing.”
Despite the various challenges of continuous striking, protesters are determined to “bring the economy to its knees and to bring the country to a halt”, she said.
Watch the report in the video below:
02:27
1:58pm: Inequality for women key part of pension reform debate
French women, whose pensions are already 40 percent lower than those of men, have been said to be the biggest losers under the new pension reform. This is because women are more likely to take time out of their careers to care of their children and other family members and therefore earn their right to full retirement later.
In the clip below, FRANCE 24’s show France in Focus takes a look at the inequality of French pensions:
FRANCE IN FOCUS
12:05
FRANCE IN FOCUS © FRANCE 24
12:48pm: Teachers on strike
Unions have estimated that 60 percent of the country’s teachers walked out of their jobs Tuesday, while the education ministry has put that number at around 30 percent.
12:23pm: Paris standstill ‘a little bit nerve-wracking’, tourist says
FRANCE 24’s reporter Clovis Casali is reporting from the Saint-Lazare train station in central Paris, where tourists and commuters alike are experiencing major disruptions to their travel plans this Tuesday.
One tourist he spoke to, described the disruptions as “a little bit nerve-wracking”. He also spoke to a French woman who said she had not experienced any delays in her early morning commute, but added that the strikes “need to continue”.
Watch the interviews in the clip below:
01:56
11:23am: Protest marches from Nice to Reims
Protest marches have already gotten under way in several cities, from Nice, in the south, to Reims, in the northeast.
10:46am: Rubbish bin collectors in Paris on strike since Monday
Bin collectors in Paris began their strike action already on Monday and the streets of the French capital have already started to pile up with hundreds of tons of rubbish.
10:38am: Why the French take their retirement so seriously
Speaking to FRANCE 24, François Geerolf, an economist at Sciences Po in Paris, explains why the French take their retirement so seriously, noting that the country’s famed 35-hour work week is far from a reality for many of the country’s white-collar workers.
Watch his full explanation in the video below:
10:19am: Rolling strikes
Ahead of the March 7 strikes, major confederations of French trade unions – including the CFDT and CGT – announced they would stage ‘’grèves reconductibles’, or rolling strikes, meaning workers will vote at the end of each strike day on whether to continue industrial action. This means the strikes have no end date, and could go on for days, or even weeks.
9:32am: Major train and flight disruptions
Trains to Germany and Spain are expected to come to a halt Tuesday, and those to and from Britain will be reduced by a third, according to the SNCF rail authority.
In France, only one in five regional and high-speed trains are expected to run, while RATP, the public transport operator for the Ile-de-France region around Paris, has said metro lines and suburban trains will also be heavily disrupted, with some metro lines running only at peak hours.
Around a fifth of flights have been canceled at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport and about a third of flights at Orly Airport.
9:05am: Roads, fuel deliveries blocked
Already in the early hours of Tuesday morning, the protests were already being felt in France, with reports of protesters blocking several roads.
According to the public road information service a national road in the city of Rennes had been blocked by around 100 protesters since 1am.
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In a a tweet, the hardline CGTunion said: “On the roads of Rennes, at the port of Gennevilliers, on the roundabouts of Rouen, in the power stations: the vigil of the March 7 strike has already begun.”
Fuel deliveries from refineries across France also came to a standstill. “The strike has begun everywhere… with deliveries blocked from all the refineries this morning,” said Eric Sellini, branch coordinator for CGT, which had launched a similar blockade last autumn that eventually saw petrol stations running out of fuel.
9:00am: More than a million expected to hit the streets
Between 1.1 and 1.4 million people are expected to hit the streets Tuesday in more than 260 locations nationwide, according to a police source cited by AFP.
The upper limit of that range would mean stronger opposition than during the five previous days of rallies that have taken place since mid-January.
On January 31, on the biggest day of demonstrations so far, 1.27 million people demonstrated.
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