Three months after the presentation of the pension reform in France, the Constitutional Council must decide on Friday April 14 on the validity of the text. In the meantime, the inter-union calls this Thursday for a twelfth day of national mobilization.
The hour of truth is approaching for the unions. Three months after the start of a “historic” mobilization against the pension reform, the Constitutional Council must decide Friday at the end of the day on the admissibility of the text, adopted in Parliament after the use of 49-3. In the meantime, the inter-union is organizing a new day of mobilization this Thursday, the twelfth since the end of January. And maybe the last in full. The secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, has in any case not ruled out this possibility. ” You will wait until the beginning of next week to have an answer to this question. “, he replied on LCI on Tuesday.
Authorities expect to see between 400,000 and 600,000 protesters nationwide. Last week, they were 570,000 to take to the streets according to the Ministry of the Interior, 2 million according to the CGT. In Paris, a procession will leave from the Place de l’Opéra to join that of the Bastille. Disturbances are to be expected at the SNCF, with an average of four out of five TGVs, and three out of five TERs. Metro and RER traffic in the Paris region should be “almost normal”. Flight cancellations are also scheduled at Nantes, Bordeaux and Toulouse airports. The CGT is also calling for a 24-hour strike in all refineries.
It is not a question of putting pressure on the Elders of rue Montpensier, assures Cyril Chabanier, president of the CFTC union, but of sending them a message: to show that the social climate remains tense and the determination of the citizens intact, to encourage them to find flaws in the text. ” We show this anger the day before, but we don’t put pressure, because we don’t question the legitimacy of the institution which is the most important in our country. “, he insists.
Three Options
Three scenarios are on the table: validation of the text, partial censorship or total censorship. The Constitutional Council must also judge whether the left’s request for a shared initiative referendum (RIP) is admissible or not.
Even if Laurent Berger had hoped last week for a censorship of “ the whole law », this scenario is not the one favored by the union leaders. In the event of partial censorship, the head of the CFDT suggested that the President of the Republic take up Article 10 of the Constitution, ” to move towards a new reading in the National Assembly “. This article allows the President of the Republic, before the promulgation of the law, to propose to Parliament a new deliberation. Partial censorship would give the unions the opportunity to challenge the executive again, on the grounds that ” the balance of the text that the government claimed to have is no longer respected “, explained last week the number 2 of the CFDT, Marylise Léon.
The unions hope at the very least that the Constitutional Council validates the shared initiative referendum, which would make it possible to ” create insights “, according to Benoît Teste, of the FSU. ” The 4.8 million signatures (required for the RIP, editor’s note), we’ll go get them. The reform will always be unfair, we will continue to fight it “, assures Dominique Corona (Unsa).
The third scenario, where the law would be validated, but not the RIP, is the one that most worries the unions, who fear in this scenario of being overwhelmed by their base. Asked by AFP on Tuesday, Christophe Aubert, CGT Exxon Mobil coordinator, said he was ready to go “ until the withdrawal of the reform “. ” Whether the Constitutional Council validates or not, it will not change our fight “, he said, adding that the Donges refinery, near Saint-Nazaire, called for a 48-hour strike on Thursday and Friday. “ We will see what the union says. But we, we feel on the ground that the employees do not want this law and therefore, we will keep our union tool available to employees who want to continue to fight “, for his part, said Fabien Dumas of Sud-Rail.
Parisian garbage collectors ready for an “act 2”
After announcing on March 28 a suspension of its movement begun three weeks earlier, the CGT of the waste and sanitation sector in Paris intends to carry out a “ act 2 of the mobilization of the garbage collectors with a new call for a strike renewable from Thursday. ” We are leaving, because for us this pension reform must fall, regardless of the decision of the Constitutional Council on Friday “, declared during a press point Régis Vieceli, general secretary of the CGT-FTDNEEA union.
The inter-union had warned the Prime Minister last week, at the end of a meeting in Matignon : no question for her of turn the page and resume dialogue with the government as if nothing had happened. Tuesday, during the session of Questions to the government in the Assembly, the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt estimated that the text was coming ” at the end of a journey », and reiterated that the government was ready to renew the dialogue. ” We received the intersyndicale last week to say both that there is still a disagreement on the question of age, but also that there are other subjects on which we will have to work and that when they will be ready for it, the door of Matignon like that of the Ministry of Labor are obviously open to continue to move forward “, he said.