Paris (AFP)

Two days of last-chance talks before the December 5 strike: unions and employers will follow Matignon on Monday and Tuesday to discuss pension reform, with little hope of compromise as the atmosphere has tended to special diets.

The Medef opens the ball Monday morning, followed by the CFTC, before the CPME, CFDT, Unsa and Force Ouvrière.

The talks will continue Tuesday with the CGT, which raised the doubt Sunday on its participation, the U2P and the CFE-CGC closing the ban. In the face of the leaders of the power stations, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe will be accompanied by High Commissioner Jean-Paul Delevoye and Solidarity Minister Agnès Buzyn.

For Matignon, it is a question "to make a point on the whole of the reform": the universal system at points wanted by the executive, the "transition" between the 42 current regimes and the future device, but also "the return to equilibrium "from 2025, date of entry into force of the new meccano. And also to show that "the social dialogue continues".

But the tone has hardened as we approach a potentially massive and lasting mobilization.

The unions of the RATP and the SNCF which had announced a renewable movement from December 5 were joined by the inter-union CGT, FO, FSU and Solidaires for an interprofessional strike and more than a hundred demonstrations in France, then by organizations of Air France, EDF, lawyers, magistrates ...

Without joining the strikes, CFE-CGC executives called for demonstrations, and the CFTC left its unions free to join the movement.

Even though its confederation broadly supports the reform, the CFDT-Cheminots also filed a notice for the 5. With the hope of obtaining the application of the new system to future hirings of the SNCF, under the "clause of the grandfather ".

It was no more necessary for Emmanuel Macron to reduce the strike of the 5th to a revolt of the employees benefiting from special regimes "of another time". "A mobilization to maintain inequalities", has abounded the President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand.

"The President of the Republic, who should be the president of all the French, tries to divide the French," said Sunday the Secretary General of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, denouncing a practice of "old world" which aims to " to stigmatize pseudo-privileged people ".

The CEO, on the contrary, predicted that the mobilization would be "very massive" and would go "well beyond the special regimes", forming the wish that the employees of the private as well as the public agents are heard "until we are removing this bad project ".

- "Anxiety" -

In this context, should we expect concessions to Matignon? "They will not let go before the 5th," predicts a union negotiator.

The secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, and the president of Medef, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, call at least out of "ambiguity".

"We must decide the major points before December 5, that's what I will tell the Prime Minister," said the boss of bosses in Paris, saying that "the vagueness" adds "from anxiety to anxiety ".

But before any decision, Edouard Philippe promised to consult the social partners on the report of the Pension Orientation Council, which he commissioned to justify possible savings measures before the reform.

Various assumptions are "open" to fill a potential deficit of "10 to 12 billion" euros, said Thursday the Prime Minister, dismissing a decline in pensions or an increase in contributions.

"We must tell the French clearly" that "we will work longer" or "by the duration of contribution or by a measure of age," he insisted. At the risk of angering his most conciliatory union interlocutor, Laurent Berger, who Sunday repeated his refusal of a "parametric measure" (contribution period, age of departure ...) to rebalance the regimes, because that "would accentuate inequalities ".

"If there is in December or early January a bill that is filed with a parametric measure, the CFDT call the employees to mobilize: is clear?", Warned the leader of the first union of France.

© 2019 AFP