HUNDREDS of thousands of workers, school students and pensioners marched across France yesterday in a day of strikes over pay and public services.
The Interior Ministry counted 270,000 demonstrators in 180 marches outside Paris by 1pm and the CGT counted more than 250,000 in 73 cities before the Paris march had set off.
CGT (General Confederation of Labour) general secretary Sophie Binet said ‘nothing will stop us’ and that only a response to the unions’ demands would end the mobilisation, adding that the CGT figure would climb considerably.
The CGT said 97 per cent of rail workers at Paris Montparnasse station were on strike. The Eiffel Tower was closed because of the strike and Lyon’s metro did not run.
The call was launched by the CGT, the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), Force Ouvrière (FO), the National Union of Autonomous Trade Unions (Unsa) and the Unitary Union Federation (FSU).
Solidaires, the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC) and the French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (CFE-CGC) joined it.
The Paris march ran from Place de la République to Place de la Nation, the route imposed by the police prefecture, which the administrative court upheld when it rejected the unions’ appeal for a Bastille to Concorde route. Binet had denounced the ban as an ‘authoritarian drift’ by the government.
In Marseille the CGT put the march at 150,000. Maxime, 17, who said he was hit by tear gas at dawn while helping to blockade his high school, said: ‘We are at the origin of all this.’
Unions counted more than 17,000 in Limoges, and one demonstrator at the marches in Limoges and Tulle said: ‘We work to pay for diesel and bills.’
The Education Ministry counted 19.14 per cent of primary and 13.53 per cent of secondary teachers on strike, while the National Union of Secondary Education (Snes-FSU) said 52 per cent of staff in middle and high schools had walked out and the Union Syndicale Lycéenne put 1,000 high schools at a standstill. The higher education ministry said 33 per cent of higher education establishments were disrupted.
The CGT is demanding a 10 per cent rise in the Smic, the inter-professional minimum growth wage, which has had no discretionary increase since 2012, and the indexation of wages to prices.
Solidaires has said its aim is to ‘block the economy’. Binet had called for strike action to take over from protest marches and urged workers to hold general assemblies in every workplace to extend the strike beyond yesterday.
Yellow vest coordinations, who called a ‘People’s 5 November’, have called for renewed blockades, strikes and demonstrations today and tomorrow.