Marseille (AFP)
"Macron, you will take your retirement fists": in Marseille, thousands of demonstrators marched Thursday against the pension reform, between determination, anger and ironic slogans.
Leaving from the Old Port at the end of the morning, the long cortege, where lawyers, health workers, private workers, public servants, teachers and retirees meet, marched in a good-natured atmosphere behind a banner "REMOVING the project. government pension reform ".
More than an hour and a half after the departure of the first protesters, the last ones were still waiting to leave the Old Port.
"Retirement before arthritis," asks a protester on a piece of cardboard, "81.81% of people have not said yes to the Macron project," asserts a second.
"This reform is just impossible, apart from favoring the private sector, this government does not do anything for real people, we are in a policy of the privileged, how do you want to be trusted?", Indignant Sophie, psychologist in pediatric oncology at La Timone Hospital: "How can I still be able to work at age 65, 67, will teens, children, want to talk to a grandmother? Not to mention the mental wear, fatigue.
"Bella ciao", "The salsa of the devil", "Clandestino", from Manu Chao, the trucks equipped with sonos spit the great classics of the demonstrations. In the van of the local union of CGT Vitrolles, the rum planter is announced at 2 euros. But the protesters prefer for the moment to shout their slogans, including the famous "Aux armes, we are the Marseillais" supporters of OM.
- "This reform will kill us" -
Hélène, 61, works in the early childhood sector: "This reform will kill us, strangle us, I fight for future generations," she says with a yellow vest on her back, brandishing a sign against taxes on basic necessities.
"Defend the retirement of young people": it is also what motivated Christian, 57 years old, researcher in the nuclear in Cadarache, to come: "With this system, we leave too much freedom to the successive governments which will be able to lower the price of the In fact, all pensions will be individualized, the principle of solidarity disappears ".
"This reform will only losers and teachers will be the losers among the losers," says Julien Marec, professor of history and geography in a college neighborhoods of northern Marseille. In his establishment today, there would be 88% of strikers among the teachers: "No CPE, no supervisor, he is at a standstill".
On the political front, the whole left was represented on the pavement. The leader of France insubordinate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, MP for Marseille, has accused the President of the Republic of wanting to bring the French to a retirement system "before 1910".
© 2019 AFP