Eight days before the decision of the Constitutional Council on the pension reform, the unions organize Thursday, April 6, an eleventh day of mobilization, hoping for a new show of force while discussions with the government are deadlocked.

The day after a meeting with Elisabeth Borne which ended in a "failure" according to the interunion, she remains inflexible in her refusal to postpone the legal retirement age to 64 years which the executive does not want to renounce.

On Wednesday, the leaders of the eight main unions went to Matignon, the opportunity for them to ask him to "withdraw" his reform, and to affirm loud and clear that they refuse until they "turn the page" and "open, as proposed by the government, other sequences of consultation". A deadlock to which Elisabeth Borne responded by saying that she did not plan "to move forward without the social partners".

For its part, the entourage of the President of the Republic, traveling in China until Saturday, assumed a project "democratically carried" and rejected responsibility for the failure of the dialogue on the unions, and in particular the CFDT which did not "want to enter into a compromise".

Union unity

Attacks that had the effect of jumping the N.1 of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, who called Emmanuel Macron "to keep his nerves", Wednesday night on BFMTV. "I call on the President of the Republic not to throw out small sentences (...) Otherwise he will end up alienating all the trade unions," said the cedist leader, visibly uplifted.

Earlier on the steps of Matignon, the unions had shown their unity, after the election of the new general secretary of the CGT Sophie Binet, and called on the French to demonstrate and strike massively. "We have found in front of us an obtuse, radicalized and disconnected government," said Sophie Binet, who will be Thursday morning alongside the strikers of Storengy, at the gas storage of Gournay-sur-Aronde (Oise).

On March 28, the mobilization had stalled, with according to the Ministry of the Interior 740,000 demonstrators in France, "more than 2 million" according to the CGT. This time the authorities expect from police sources between 600 and 800,000 people, including 60 to 90,000 in Paris where the parade will go from Invalides to Place d'Italie. Some 11,500 police and gendarmes will be mobilized, while the last processions have been punctuated by tensions.

Fewer strikers

The number of strikers is also declining. The SNCF plans to run three TGV out of four and one TER out of two, a traffic in clear improvement compared to previous days. Traffic will be "almost normal" for the metro and RER in Paris.

In national education, around 20% of primary school teachers will be on strike, according to Snuipp-FSU.

On Tuesday, the oil group Esso-ExxonMobil announced the restart of production at its Port-Jerome-Gravenchon refinery. The neighbouring TotalEnergies refinery in Gonfreville-L'Orcher is the only one whose production is still halted due to the strike.

If the Parisian garbage collectors have returned to work, a new notice has been filed for April 13.

New mobilization before the decision of the Wise Men

An inter-union meeting is planned in the evening at the headquarters of Force Ouvrière, during which the unions are expected to announce a new day of mobilization before the decision of the Constitutional Council.

Laurent Berger hopes that the Sages will censor "the whole law" on April 14. Otherwise, a green light to the procedure of referendum of shared initiative (RIP) on pensions could also "be an opportunity not to promulgate this law and to start again on a good basis", he said. In this case, the unions plan to put all their energy into collecting the approximately 4.87 million signatures required.

With AFP

The summary of the week France 24 invites you to look back on the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news with you everywhere! Download the France 24 app