Paris protests against Macron’s decision to increase the retirement age to 64: an insight from the protests of the French government and the education unions
Paris is expected to bear the brunt of the protests, with most lines on the metro running only at the busiest times, according to the city’s transport agency RATP. The main education trade union FSU said Sunday that 120 schools would close for the day and 60% of primary school teachers would be on strike in the French capital.
France’s civil aviation authority, meanwhile, has asked airlines to reduce scheduled flights by 20% and 30% at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris respectively. Air France said about 20% of short-haul flights would be canceled, but long-haul services would be maintained. The airline said that last minute delays and cancelations could not be ruled out.
National railway operator SNCF said very few regional trains would operate and that four out of five trains on the TGV, France’s intercity high-speed rail service, would be canceled.
Philippe Martinez, secretary general of the CGT, the biggest French union, said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche Sunday that unions “are moving up a gear” and he expected “that the mobilizations will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”
France has revolted against President Emmanuel Macron’s move to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The French view of life and work is offered insight by the protests.
A record 1.3 million people took to the streets of France on January 19 to protest against the policies of the government.
How French Pensions Aren’t Going to Die: A Commentary on France’s First Five-Decade Budget and the Problem of the Pension Deficit
The government has said the pension legislation is necessary to tackle a funding deficit, but the reforms have angered workers at a time when living costs are rising.
If the opposition fails to give their support to the government, it could use the clause in the French constitution to push through the budget-related bills without going to a parliamentary vote.
The latest plans are a much more straightforward attempt to balance the system’s finances by making the French work longer, an effort that the government acknowledges will be difficult for some but that it insists is necessary.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicates that France has a low rate of pension poverty as well as a high net pension replacement rate.
The president is right that the budget would suffer if the retirement age stays the same. When the Fifth Republic was created in 1958, there were more than four workers for every retiree. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 1.7 workers per retiree, and over the next decade, without an adjustment an increasingly aging population will be relying on barely 1.5 workers to fund each retiree’s pension. The nation will likely be going increasingly into deficit, or taxes will be forced to skyrocket.
Antoine Bozio, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, said that there was no short-term “explosion of the deficit” that needed to be addressed urgently. He said that it wasn’t a problem in the long term even though the system was not in danger or on the verge of a catastrophe.
Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and Paris correspondent for CBS News. His views are not reflected in this commentary. CNN has more opinion.
The Paris Fires: The Fate of Macron’s Prime Minister and his Unpopularity During the Presidency of his First Prime Minister
An American visitor to Paris emailed me after her stroll Thursday night: “I was walking home from dinner in rue du Cirque when I saw the cars on fire. At Rue Royale, they used tear gas. The street was on fire from both ends to get to my hotel. Is Paris burning? In my street YES!! Now in my room I can smell smoke.”
For Macron and France’s partners and allies, the stakes may be even higher. Once seen as the new leader of a united Europe, stepping into that role with the departure of Angela Merkel, the powerful former German chancellor, Macron is now mired in controversy at home. Still, he and his success or failure to reform his nation’s pension system could be a test case for a host of other countries facing aging workforces and widening deficits.
The political sharks are all smelling blood on the water even though the next elections aren’t for another four.
Buses, subways and public works across France shuddered to a halt, barricades went up in streets and were set ablaze. Garbage collectors walked off, protesting the rise in their retirement to 59 from 57 — among the many exceptions for earlier full retirement due to the nature of their jobs. More than 7,000 tons of garbage have piled up on the streets of Paris — a pungent smorgasbord for the city’s rat population that, among the world’s most prolific, is said to be thriving.
As it happens, it has already been invoked 11 times under Macron’s prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, more times than under any of her 15 predecessors except for one — Michel Rocard, who used 49.3 some 28 times against an utterly hostile Parliament. Even de Gaulle’s three prime ministers only invoked the provision 10 times in 10 years.
Some of the political currents in Parliament have some tough decisions to make. Macron has bestowed a marvelous gift on his own plurality, indeed really any members of Parliament who might have even considered voting for the pension reform, by removing the need for them to declare themselves publicly for a deeply unpopular piece of legislation.
Will a new prime minister be better if a no-confidence vote succeeds as early as Monday? France is the only country that has a retirement age of 62. In my view, that is not how it is.
Does Good Work Take Too Long? A Study by Yukawa University of Technology (Hamiltonian University of Hong Kong) – Evaluation of the Effort, Quality and Service
When they think that they do not have enough time, have enough means to do a good job, to produce good quality work, good products and good service, they find it is not a good job, because they can’t recognize this kind of job.