new day of protests in France

Paris (EFE).- The French unions have called today a new day of demonstrations against the pension reform of the president, Emmanuel Macron, the fourth since the start of the protest on January 19, with which they want to demonstrate a greater capacity of mobilization and seamless.

For the first time in this struggle between all the union centrals and the Government, the nearly 250 protests planned throughout the country are organized on Saturday to also allow many workers who had not been able to demonstrate on weekdays to join the movement, with the aim of to exceed a million people in the streets.

In addition, on this occasion strikes have hardly been organized and this should facilitate travel to attend the marches and thus greatly exceed the figures of last Tuesday, which marked a slight setback in participation, with 757,000 demonstrators according to the police (two million, according to the General Confederation of Labor, CGT).

The secretary general of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT, the country’s first central), Laurent Berger, said on Friday that he expected “a very large mobilization”, with an eye on the 1.27 million people who accounted for the forces order on January 31 (more than 2.5 million, according to organizers).

Berger and the leader of the CGT (the second union in the country), Philippe Martínez, have managed to maintain unity despite their different sensibilities, the former reformist and the latter a rupturist, who has not been deprived of showing his willingness to launch tougher actions , particularly strikes called indefinitely in strategic sectors such as transport and energy.

The demonstrations have taken place with hardly any acts of violence and this has prevented the Executive from using this as an argument against the protest, although Macron has not deprived himself of appealing to the unions for responsibility, which have responded that he is the “responsible” for possible disorders.

Berger and Martínez have reproached him, above all, for “turning a deaf ear” to the repeated massive mobilizations in the streets against a reform whose main axis is to delay the minimum retirement age from the current 62 years to 64.

The unions meet after today’s demonstrations to design their strategy for the coming weeks. They have already announced another day of strikes and demonstrations on February 16 and it is assumed that they will add other dates in March, probably the 7th and 8th of that month, once the winter school holidays are over.

The Government assures that it does listen to what is said on the street and that it has been able to make its initial plan evolve. In reality, the changes in his project respond, above all, to some demands of the conservative parliamentarians of Los Republicanos, whose votes will be essential for the reform to go ahead.

Both the left en bloc, whose leaders are demonstrating this Saturday with the unions, and the extreme right of Marine Le Pen oppose Macron’s bill, which has been going through the plenary session of the National Assembly since Monday.