MILLIONS of workers and youth took part in the first of two new mass strikes and demonstrations in France on Tuesday in opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s government attack on pensions.
Tuesday’s and Saturday’s strikes and marches were planned ahead of the parliamentary debate that began on Monday afternoon
Meanwhile, left-wing opponents of the minority administration have already filed thousands of amendments .
Macron’s plan to raise the age of retirement is a flagship policy of his second term in office, which he has defended as ‘essential’ given forecasts for deficits in the coming years.
But it is widely unpopular and last week’s demonstrations brought out more than 2.5 million to the streets, said the unions.
It marked the largest protest in France since 2010.
Macron’s government has so far stuck to its guns, with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Sunday offering a small concession to win support from the conservative Republicans party.
While the reform will set a new legal minimum retirement age of 64 for most workers, up from 62, Borne said people who started work aged between 20 and 21 will be covered by an exemption allowing them to leave earlier, at 63.
Calling the offer a ‘patch’, the head of the conservative CFDT union Laurent Berger said that the move ‘isn’t the response to the huge, geographically and professionally diverse mobilisation’ that has swept France.
The CGT union federation said in Monday: ‘The CGT has created a fund in solidarity with the strikers mobilised to win a fairer and more united pension reform. Now you can subscribe online
The commitment in the fight of many professional sectors gives confidence and hope to win the abandonment and another project of reform of the pension system.
Many are those who wish to bring their support, their encouragement to the employees in struggle by contributing financially.
If you wish to bring your financial support to the employees engaged in the renewable strike, the General Confederation of Labour organises the financial solidarity which will be entirely dedicated to them with a transparent redistribution between the various professional sectors concerned.’
The. Force Ouvrière union federation issued a statement headed: ‘Pensions: the anger of women workers in the face of a reform that penalises them
Careers cut short with the arrival of children, lower wages, part-time work suffered… In the Parisian procession (31 January), the failure to take into account the persistent career and salary inequalities suffered by female workers was an omnipresent subject.
If we add to this the ignoring of the hardship factors that affect jobs mainly held by women, the cup is full.
Mélissa, 39, is a nurse in an addiction treatment service in the private sector and has two children.
‘With this reform, I would have to work until I was 67, just to have a full pension! It comes down to making the French work until exhaustion, first of all the women. I’m here to defend social rights,’ insists the FO activist, who castigates an executive disconnected from reality.
‘Tomorrow the nursing staff will be older than the residents!’
Her situation is shared by many women with children (nearly 9 out of 10 French women). The two-year postponement of the legal retirement age, from 62 to 64, would cause them to lose the benefit of part of the increase in quarters granted for the birth and education of children (eight quarters per child ).
In 2020, 123,000 mothers used the scheme to leave at age 62, having all the quarters required, and therefore at the full rate. With the reform, they would have to wait 64 years to liquidate their retirement: the postponement erases all or part of the benefit of the device.
Franck Riester, minister responsible for relations with Parliament, ended up acknowledging that women were ‘somewhat penalised’.
The subject is so sensitive that the Prime Minister said she was open to a discussion in Parliament on better use of the ‘maternity’ and ‘education’ terms.
A step back: they were granted in 1972 to compensate for the profoundly changed career of women at the time of birth: interruptions, part-time, less progress and, ultimately, lower salary.
‘Family constraints that have not disappeared. Even today, one woman out of two reduces or completely stops her professional activity when a child arrives. Like Mélissa, who took two parental leaves.
Double trouble, ‘the project does not take them into account,’ she explains.
The life expectancy of a nurse is seven years less than that of the average woman. 20% retire on disability.
At not even 40 years old, Melissa says she is ‘already exhausted’ by her job that she loves. ‘Poor working conditions don’t help. A third of the nursing positions are vacant in my department. You have to do without.’
The insufficient revaluation of the minimum pension
Nassira is 61, this housekeeper, mother of three, who works as a subcontractor in a hospital has known for a long time that she will have to work late, ‘to have a somewhat decent retirement,’ because of her low wages in a career marked by a dismissal, two parental leaves.
The reform – which would push back for her, by one quarter, the legal age of departure – will not change anything in this situation, she explains.
Before the presentation of the text, she had done her calculations: ‘If I leave at 62, it’s for 1,000 euros gross when I’ve worked all my life.
‘I have 189 quarters (169 would be required for a departure at 62 years and 3 months) but what am I going to do with 1,000 euros per month? I am a tenant, my youngest daughter is still a student.’
However, she will not be able to benefit from the revaluation of the minimum pension to 1,200 euros gross, which is presented as an advance by the executive. Except that this is not guaranteed regardless of the retiree’s career: it is limited to the lucky ones who have had a full career at minimum wage.
To improve her retirement income, Nassira is counting on the premium on her pension, which will be increased by a certain percentage per quarter worked beyond the required contribution period.
Belonging to the first generations impacted by the reform, she ‘hopes to slip’ through the cracks: ‘I need the premium,’ she says. Because, with the reform, the possibility of improving one’s pension by working beyond the legal age will be deferred, logically disappearing between 62 and 64 years. A point on which the executive remains silent.
But it does not pass notice, especially among women close to retirement. ‘I’m going to have to work for another year, until I’m 63, with no bonus, just for them!’ breathes Cathy, 59, administrative agent who had planned to liquidate her retirement at 62, having all her quarters.
Difficulty of jobs held by women: the great forgotten
Distant horizon, retirement is nonetheless a ‘big subject’ for Noémie, 31, cashier in a Carrefour hypermarket in Val-d’Oise. The young blonde woman explains that she is forced part-time (30 hours a week) and unable to work more in her job.
The Observatory of Inequalities estimated, in 2022, that nearly a million women were in this situation, compared to around 400,000 men. ‘I would have preferred to be hired for 35 hours six years ago. I still want it. It allows you to earn more, to contribute more for retirement. But the employer limits full-time, he prefers to hire pro contracts or students,’ she comments.
Her primary concern nevertheless remains the hardship of the work which gnaws away at daily life, ‘makes my hands swell in the evening’. ‘I grit my teeth,’ confides this former caregiver, who had to give up the job prematurely, shortly after leaving training, ‘stopped short by three perforations of the tendons of the hand.’
Her colleague Hélène by her side, 38 years old and part-time therapeutic. At 50, ‘I will no longer have a back, that’s for sure,’ she predicts.
In terms of recognition, there is no progress in the government text: the four exposure/difficulty factors which were removed in 2017 from the professional prevention account (C2P), and therefore no longer make it possible to feed this in points to benefit from early departures, will not be reinstated by the reform.
However, almost all of the excluded exposure factors – arduous postures, manual handling of loads, mechanical vibrations – relate to professions mainly occupied by women.’
- End of the red stamp: heavy consequences on employment and the public postal service, warns the CGT.
Changes to the Post in 2023 will have consequences for workers and users. With the end of the priority stamp and daily delivery, by 2024, half of postman jobs could disappear.
Under the guise of offering customers ‘more ecological mail that responds to changing uses,’ La Poste has chosen to deprive a substantial part of the population of its services.
With the removal of the red stamp and the implementation of the New Mail Range since January 1, 2023, users will only see the postman pass through their letterbox twice a week, unless they receive a parcels, a registered letter or because subscribers to the daily press (parcels and registered letters which remain products with a stable number).
The postmen continue to work 6 days out of 7 but the distribution of mail goes to ‘D+3’.
The choice of the digital stamp sweeps away the 16.5% of the French population suffering from an inability to use digital tools or residing in a white zone. For those over 75, the figure rises to 67.2%.
La Poste remained almost the last local public service.
It plays a central role in society, there are strong expectations from the populations in her regard.
After having dismantled its network of post offices, La Poste is thus dismantling its transport and distribution network by relying solely on financial logic.
The new standard will make it possible, with the help of AI (artificial intelligence), to halve the daily distribution points and to lengthen the rounds of postal workers even further.
Such a restructuring of mail, which prioritises productivity over quality of service and public service, has serious consequences on employment, and this in all of the Post’s professions.
‘This unprecedented massive job cut plan, which the leaders of the Post Office are preparing with the approval of the government, will accentuate territorial inequalities, weigh negatively on the feeling of abandonment and the lack of social ties expressed by the population during the social movements of the recent period, participate in increasing precariousness and seal the end of a character to which the French are viscerally attached “the postman”,’ analyses Christian Mathorel Secretary General of the CGT-FAPT.
