"Our lives, not your profits";
"Subway, work, vault";
"For the right to free time".
On the placards brandished by the demonstrators during the parades organized since January 19 against the pension reform, the question of work and the place which is devolved to it in society is displayed in large.
“The pension reform is unfair because it taxes the free time of the most modest, who have less life expectancy than the richest, denounces for example Pierre-Louis, a 28-year-old demonstrator. The government strives to say that he does not want to raise taxes, but what he is proposing is a tax on free time.Even though people aspire to work in good conditions, they also want to have time freed from commercial constraints. It's something that defends itself and must continue to defend itself in the processions."
>> To read: Pension reform: "Are we going to have to live to work?"
Right to rest and leisure
“The opposition to the pension reform catalyzes an older and deeper malaise about the place of work in society, confirms sociologist Hugo Touzet, member of the Critical Quantity collective. The difficulties expressed by caregivers, for example, are changing to both by the denunciation of a salary that is too low, by the impossibility of doing their job properly but also of leading a personal life.The need for meaning and reorganization of work therefore does not only concern managers or young people, but the whole of society. It is no longer a question of working for the sake of working, but of asking why, and how, we work."
In the processions, the denunciation of the lack of time dedicated to leisure, already often highlighted since the Covid-19 crisis and the generalization of teleworking, thus joins that of inequalities of wealth and poor working conditions.
"I have been working since I was 16, explains Farid, a 37-year-old VTC driver, as he walks behind his daughter's stroller. Will I have the right, at some point in my life, to take advantage of my family and rest, or will I have to work until I die? How far will it go?
“The social contract is shaken”
"Workers feel wronged by a system that has not kept its promises, analyzes Hugo Touzet. If we look at the distribution of the wealth produced since 1980, we see that the share taken by capital income, that is to say shareholders, increases more and more to the detriment of income from work, that is to say wages, and this, while productivity has increased and social rights are declining. of the Second World War between the state, the workers and the employers is shaken."
The analysis echoes the revolt of Amélie, 21, whose mother, an emergency nurse, has her back broken by her job and is struggling to pay her bills.
"The" work value ", sums up the young demonstrator, is to agree to get up every morning on condition of being able, in exchange, to pay your rent, eat, go out, offer sports lessons to your children and finish his months serenely. They say we are lazy, but that's not true. I don't want to work all my life earning a minimum wage so that others get rich."
Focused on full employment, objective number 1 of his second term, Emmanuel Macron thus seems to be going against the tide of the aspirations of a large part of the population.
Climate-proof "work more to produce more"
Because this aspiration for work that makes sense and leaves room for other aspects of life is further reinforced by the awareness of climate change.
Faced with the imminence of a major upheaval, "working more to earn – and produce – more" thus seems increasingly anachronistic to many demonstrators.
"I want to work longer, but in my vegetable garden," smiles Did, 56.
This plastic arts teacher affirms that he "loves his job", but that he does not see himself "exercising it until the age of 64 in the face of increasingly overloaded classes".
"I don't want to become an old and embittered teacher, explains Did. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind working my bit of garden, reading, going fishing or taking care of children in a associative… I want to be an active and useful 'old man', but without having to depend on paid work. There are other ways to enrich society than simply always having to produce."
>> To read: "Eat the Rich": climate and social justice unite in processions
"The pension reform carries a social project"
“Far from being just a technical question, the pension reform carries a social project, and the demonstrators have understood this well, points out Hugo Touzet. By weakening social protection such as unemployment rights or pensions, the strategy of the government is to disengage the state and individualize what was hitherto organized by the community. They present this retreat as a necessity. This is what the mobilization is very strong against today.
Among the demonstrators, there is no temptation to withdraw into oneself: in the processions, ideas abound.
"By aligning the wages of women with those of men, we would increase the contributions", also suggests a demonstrator, while another affirms, brandishing the sticker of a union: "by increasing all the wages, the contributions would increase also and could finance the public hospital, pensions and the fight for the climate";
by "taxing the super-rich and the super-profits", proposes a third, "we could solve the deficit"... So many proposals which, beyond the defense of a right, ultimately call for a much greater change .
>> To read: Pension reform: "Pulling back the retirement age is to jeopardize social cohesion"
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