Negotiations yesterday between the French government and trade unions failed to break the deadlock over pension reform as both sides stood firm ahead of a fifth day of nationwide protests.
With a public transport strike into its 37th day, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government defied unions yesterday with a draft pension reform bill that included a contested clause on raising the retirement age by two years to 64.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe says the reform must result in a balanced pension budget and that raising the retirement age is the best way to achieve this.
He did, however, say that he would send trade unions new proposals today.
Speaking after a day of talks with trade unions representatives,
Philippe said the government is still determined to push its planned single national pension system through parliament before the summer.
The prime minister is facing pushback from moderate unions on several aspects of Macron’s keynote reform, especially a planned increase in the age for retirement on a full pension.
Hardliners opposed to the reform outright have taken to the streets in mass demonstrations and have shut down much of Paris’s metro system since early December.
“I would say we have made good progress in the search for the compromise that we want ... but there is still work to do,” Philippe said in a brief press statement after yesterday’s talks.
Laurent Berger, head of France’s biggest union, said he had sensed an “opening” in his talks with Philippe but needed a concrete response quickly.
“I hope that it is really very quick, because this has gone on long enough,” the head of the moderate CFDT union said, criticising what he described as a “logic of confrontation” in recent weeks.
Berger has insisted the government must cancel the planned raise in the age for retirement on a full pension from 62 to 64.
On Thursday some 452,000 people – by official estimates – took to the streets around France in the fourth day of mass protests against the reform.
The CGT union and other hardliners have called a fifth day of protests for today.
CGT chief Philippe Martinez, who wants the entire reform project off the table, dismissed the retirement age question as a “fake row”.
Many workers already have to work past 62 to get a full pension, he noted.
Any shortfall in pension funds could be made up by measures such as pay rises and ending social security payment exemptions for businesses, Martinez argued.
Paris lawyers meanwhile staged a protest in the lobby of the city’s Court of Appeals, where they lay down on the floor in their black robes.
Lawyers in several cities have protested, in one case flinging their robes to the ground during a speech by Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet, against the amalgamation of their retirement scheme with the new national scheme.
France spends the equivalent of 14% of GDP on pension payments.
Macron has already stared down the unions over reform of the state-run SNCF railways and French labour laws and is now holding his ground once again.
However, early last year, he made concessions worth €17bn to quell months of often violent “yellow vest” protests against the high cost of living and elitism that posed the severest challenge yet to his authority.
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