Juline Garnier 8:24 p.m., May 01, 2022

The union mobilization for Labor Day is also an opportunity to come back to the thorny pension reform wanted by the executive.

Bernard Vivier, director of the Labor Institute, just like Marylise Léon, number two of the CFDT, advocate the return of a real dialogue with the trade unions, eclipsed for two years. 

One of the issues that risks becoming a source of tension between Emmanuel Macron's executive and the social partners is obviously that of pensions and the postponement of the retirement age to 65.

On the occasion of the various parades organized for Labor Day, will the demands of the opposition be heard by the executive?

"I think that the President of the Republic launched a bit like a totem these 65 years at the time of the campaign and that the French need to know why", commented at the microphone of Europe 1 this Sunday morning Marylise Léon, number two from the CFDT.

“We ask to be concerted”

"I think that the 65 years have been brandished a bit as a miracle solution, but nobody knows what the problem is. I think that we need a clarification already from the executive to explain to us what is the will of make a reform. And already, we are asking to be concerted and to discuss. So we will go to the discussion table if they are open", she added.

The representative also clarified that the discussion would be cut short if the only solution presented to the government was only this retirement age.

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The subject is all the more sensitive because the May Day parades take place a week after the re-election of the President of the Republic.

But also because according to Bernard Vivier, director of the Institute of Labor and specialist in social relations, trade unions have been "a little disconnected over the past two years from public visibility".

Review the background of the retirement file

These are now awaiting the constitution of the government and obviously the display of priorities.

"The face to face needs to be managed on two levels. The substance of the matter itself: should pension reform be carried out? How high? A reform of the entire system? Converge the different pension systems retirement age? Should we raise the retirement age? That's the content of the file. And then the other face to face, that's the relationship. It's the game of the government actors of a side, unions and employers on the other", he explains.

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For the specialist, the question is whether these discussions will be less vertical than it was during the first five-year term.