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For more than a month and a half, France has been affected by a social crisis which does not seem to be subsiding. While numerous blockages in rail and air transport have paralyzed a large part of the country, other trades have also mobilized to maintain their pension plans.
Opponents of the pension reform bill continue to mobilize throughout France, with targeted actions that are increasing. Friday, January 17, it is the Louvre museum, the most visited in the world, which could not open its doors, blocked by strikers opposed to the pension reform project. A first for the museum which had never closed since the start of the protest movement on December 5.
The intersyndicale at the head of the action denounced " the conditions of the museum agents who are degrading day by day " as well as the " loss of staff " and a " disengagement of the State ". Videos of furious tourists facing the closed doors of the Louvre then toured social networks.
If the museum was able to reopen on Saturday January 18, other professions with very specific plans continue to mobilize to maintain their retirement plans. Faced with the general pension scheme, they represent only a very minority share of the retired population.
The Paris Opera and the Comédie Française
It is a historic strike for the Paris Opera, which since early December has canceled 67 shows. A deadlock whose losses represent 14 million euros. If no compromise is found, the strike risks continuing, because the artists and machinists of the Paris Opera are attached to their special pension scheme, first set up by Louis XIV, then formalized as a fund autonomous in 1945. A special regime that the State is determined to abolish.
The Paris Opera is the only cultural institution, along with the Comédie Française, to benefit from a special pension scheme, which applies to employees on permanent or fixed-term contracts who prove that they have worked at least one year at the Opéra de Paris. In all, more than 1,880 workers are affected by this special scheme and for a full pension, it is necessary to prove fifteen years of service within the institution.
Most employees (dancers, choir artists, orchestra musicians or technicians) are entitled to early retirement before the age of 62 due to the arduous nature of their profession. This is the case of dancers who can retire at 42 years of age and choir artists at 50 years of age.
For the dancers, it is expected that the reform will only apply to those hired from 2022, but for the employees of the Opera this special regime must continue and apply also for future generations of dancers.
In addition to the retirement age, the employees of the Opéra national de Paris want their pension, essential once their career is over, to better bounce back and start a new career where they sometimes start from scratch.
For its part, the Comédie Française, with its 300 employees, has also canceled several performances since December 5 to contest the disappearance of its special regime. Saturday January 18, many employees of the Paris Opera and the Comédie Française organized a concert in front of the Palais Garnier to contest the pension reform. In December, an interpretation of Swan Lake in front of the Palais Garnier had already gone around the world.
📹 On the steps of the Opera Garnier, in Paris, the dancers of the Opera today interpreted a passage from Lac des Cygnes to protest against the pension reform #AFP pic.twitter.com/AL3QtqWEri
Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) December 24, 2019Liberal professions under threat
With their autonomous plans, which allow them to have their own pension funds, the liberal professions are also strongly threatened by the pension reform project proposed by the government. Since September 2019, these health, legal and aviation professions have joined together in the SOS pensions collective in order to protect the autonomous plans managed by the professions that compose it, which corresponds to approximately one million salaried employees. 'after the National Union of Liberal Professions.
Among the professions concerned: masseurs-physiotherapists, nurses, speech therapists, surgeons, accountants, pilots and even lawyers. The collective's claim is clear: preserve these autonomous regimes at all costs.
" Our autonomous regimes work, cost the taxpayer nothing and contribute to national solidarity ," explains François Randazzo, physiotherapist and president of the Alizé union. " I am not against the idea of a reform, but I am against this reform and the increase in contributions that accompany it, which will drop from 14% to 28% ". According to the collective, this reform will then have serious consequences for small firms.
Between January 3 and 6, the 16 liberal professions of the collective led a "sliding strike" depending on the days that arranged them. From now on, it is a general strike to all liberal professions which is planned for next February 3 and could mark the beginning of an unlimited strike, specifies the collective SOS pensions.
“ We have seen no change in our demands, and social dialogue is non-existent. Blocking is the only way to be heard, ”says François Randazzo.
Justice paralyzed ...
Among the liberal professions subject to an autonomous pension plan are lawyers, who have been very active since the beginning of the month. On January 17, their strike was renewed for a week, after having multiplied the symbolic actions against the pension reform project in several French cities such as Bordeaux, Toulouse or Caen.
With this pension reform, like the other liberal professions, lawyers' contributions will double and their pensions will drop. The National Council of Bars demands to be received without delay by the Prime Minister and disputes the proposal of the executive to keep the fund clean for their profession, but within the universal regime, which according to them, would only confirm the end of their autonomous regime. Just like physiotherapists, lawyers defend the proper functioning of their autonomous regime which does not need to disappear.
The lawyers say they are ready to block the judicial system at all costs and they even turned their backs on the State, in a very symbolic action during the judicial reopening of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal. With this pension reform, it is about 30% of the law firms which will disappear, estimates the National Council of Bars.
Representatives of the legal profession want to maintain the autonomy of their regime and the protest movement has been widely followed throughout France, with obviously consequences for many cases, both civil and criminal. For the moment, the black dresses maintain their mobilization until January 24.
#reformationsdesretraites #AvocatsEnColere # AvocatsEnGreve # Mobilization of lawyers at the formal return to court hearing. @ManuelFuret pic.twitter.com/7RB6ieOge9
Toulouse Bar (@BarreauToulouse) January 17, 2020... and a " dead ports " operation
Other professions strongly mobilized against the pension reform: dockers and port workers. An operation of "dead ports", that is to say blocking French seaports, had taken place from January 14 to 17 in the whole country. This time, the operation will be renewed on January 22, 23 and 24, this was announced by the CGT federation of ports and docks which also calls to maintain pickets in the major seaports of the country (Dunkirk, Le Havre, Rouen, Nantes-Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, Bordeaux and Marseille).
Since the start of the mobilization, these operations have prevented the movement of goods and have led to supply problems in several sectors, including shortages in supermarkets in the overseas territories. The blocking of ports therefore has very significant financial and commercial consequences.
Unlike the liberal professions or the artists of the Paris Opera, dockworkers do not benefit from autonomous or special schemes, but have a hardship agreement linked to the collective agreement of their branch which allows them to retire for a few years before the legal retirement age, i.e. 59 years. Faced with working conditions in this sector, the CGT federation of ports and docks believes that it is unacceptable to extend the working time of employees and it is for this reason that it is fighting to abandon the reform of pensions.
Friday, January 24, a seventh day of mobilization is planned throughout the country during the review of the bill on pension reform in the Council of Ministers, to challenge this reform which affects all trades.