Hundreds of thousands went on strike and joined marches across France on Thursday, January 19, halting trains, disrupting schooling and cutting electricity production in a trial for the government as workers oppose a deeply unpopular pension overhaul. France’s Interior Ministry counted 1.12 million demonstrators in France as a whole, including 80,000 in Paris. The hardline CGT union said 2 million people had marched throughout the country, and 400,000 in Paris, and maybe another million went on strike.
Large demonstrations were staged in over 200 cities all over France: at least 40,000 people marched in Lyon; 30,000 in Toulouse; 26,000 in Marseilles; 18,000 in Caen; 15,000 in Montpellier; 14,000 in Tours; 10,000 in Le Havre; and 7,000 in Alès. These numbers are even higher than those of 2019.
Firefighters, bakers, museum workers, teachers, train and metro drivers, but also high-school students and regular citizens stopped work on Jan. 19 to protest a reform they deem unjust and untimely as the cost-of-living crisis hits an all-time high. The strikes brought much of the capital’s public transport to a standstill and halted a large proportion of trains throughout France. One of the capital’s metro lines was closed completely, with another 12 “very disrupted,” Paris transport operator RATP told AFP. The rate of strikers reached 46.3% of workers at the state-owned national rail company SNCF. The Education Ministry said 42.35% of teachers in primary education were striking, and 34.66% in secondary education. Estimates from teachers’ unions placed those numbers between 65 and 70%. Early on Thursday, strikers at state-owned energy provider EDF said they had lowered electricity output by 7,000 MW, while grid operator RTE put the figure at 5,000 MW—enough to power two cities the size of Paris. The reduction would have “no impact on users,” the CGT union federation for the sector said.
Both the unions and the police prevented violence as much as possible. Only some 30 people were arrested, mostly members of a 1,000-strong radical gang from “Black Bloc” who wore masks, helmets and black clothes, which had split off a group from the main demonstration. No major violent incidents were reported elsewhere in France.
Macron refused to reconsider his reform. Speaking from Barcelona, where he attended a French-Spanish summit, the President stressed again: “We must have that reform.” “We will do it with respect, in a spirit of dialogue but also determination and responsibility.”
The inter-union alliance called for a mobilization of the same magnitude on January 31. The CFDT, the main “reformist” trade-union which is always working for the dominant powers and here is in reality in favor of a pension reform only disagreeing on some details of Macron’s reform plan, wants to keep things low key and lobby the MPs to “improve” the government plan.
According to inside sources, the more traditional local unions and branches of the CGT, even opposing their own leadership, warn that “leapfrogging"—meaning leaving too many days between each new day of mobilization—will take the spirit out of the popular mobilization and bring about its defeat. These rank and file union leaders are calling on the government to drop the reform right away, and are determined to return to the streets until the government backs down. While the inter-union group only calls for a new day of action on January 31, other organizations by branch want immediate massive actions. On Jan. 26, a 48-hour strike will hit the oil refineries and the energy sector. The CGT warns, “Let no one be fooled, we will be crushed by the government if we don’t strike now while the iron is hot and disrupt, by crescendoing, until it paralyzes the economy of the country.”
Encouraged by these calls for mobilization, citizens could also organize demonstrations. Police intelligence dreads “a new large-scale citizen mobilization” with the accumulation of hot issues in recent months: inflation, the energy crisis and now the poorly received pension reform. In a note, the police say they fear “long strikes in several key sectors of the economy” and demonstrations “outside any union framework” as well as “necessarily disruptive and unpredictable modes of action.”