Tuesday, March 7, Sylvie got up at dawn. But instead of having breakfast quietly before going to work, this storekeeper employed by a local authority took her car towards the Valcourt roundabout, in Saint-Dizier, in Haute-Marne. Around 4:30 a.m., she found a small group of citizens there, who had come to set up filter dams on the outskirts of this city of around 23,000 inhabitants – the most populous in the department. At the call of many unions, several axes were thus blocked for a whole part of the day, preventing in particular heavy goods vehicles from unloading their goods in the four corners of the commune. The goal ? Fight against the pension reform, via the operation “Haute-Marne at a standstill”, before going to demonstrate, at the end of the day, in front of the town hall. “For me, it’s essential: retirement at 64, I don’t want it,” says Sylvie, suffering from ankylosing spondylitis – an inflammation of the joints which affects her in the pelvis and legs. No matter the long hours spent on the roundabout, the cold or the 80 euros in wages lost on this day of national strike. “When you have a pathology like mine, you realize that work is not health. I want to enjoy my life. I’m 49, and I clearly don’t see myself continue 15 years like this”, she breathes.
In Saint-Dizier, the official is not the only one to express her dissatisfaction on the roundabouts. According to the local CGT Union, more than 3,000 people demonstrated on Tuesday March 7 in the Haute-Marne sub-prefecture. The local authorities counted, for their part, 2,500 demonstrators and 350 activists mobilized on the roundabouts. “For a small town like ours, it’s a success!” Rejoices Benjamin Cabartier, secretary general of the CGT Cheminots de Saint-Dizier. Especially since some mobilizations continued the next day on several roundabouts or roads. “Some carriers are losing patience slightly, but the vast majority support us. They get off, have a coffee with us, understand the need for these demonstrations”, assures the trade unionist, who himself mobilized on the roundabout of Marnaval, at the entrance to the town.
At his side, the man is pleased to have met an “impressive number of different people”: teachers, railway workers, metallurgy professionals and local foundries, retirees, a handful of former yellow vests, and even young people from the ZAD de Bure, located about forty kilometers away. “It’s not a surprise: there is a real militant and trade unionist tradition in Saint-Dizier. What would have been surprising is the absence of mobilization!”, comments François Cornut-Gentille, mayor of the city. for thirty years under the label Les Républicains (LR). If his successor Quentin Brière does not wish to speak on the question, the former city councilor notes, him, “a traditional unionist core which aggregates more and more new profiles: sympathizers of the left, but also pensioners nostalgic for the past action, citizens without labels who wish to make their weariness heard, or more generally their rejection of Emmanuel Macron”.
“People feel like they’ve been forgotten”
Benjamin Cabartier cannot contradict him. “There are pensions that people are worried about, of course, but it’s not just that. It’s a general fed up”, he summarizes, citing in turn the increase in the low energy, gasoline, food prices and wages. “In fact, people feel like they’re being forgotten. And that no matter how they behave, how hard they work or how tight their belts, it just keeps getting harder and harder for them.” For the past few months, Sylvie has admitted to turning her eyes away from the price of meat trays at the supermarket, no longer allowing herself the cinema sessions she liked to go to from time to time, counts everything. “I leave my car on Friday evening at home when I get home from work, and I only take it back on Monday to go to work, to save fuel. We take the full brunt of inflation”. Ditto for his 21-year-old daughter, who has just been hired as a security guard and intends to demonstrate over the weekend to assert her retirement rights. “Our children are well aware that we will have to fight,” analyzes the mother.
At 55, Véronique and her husband live the same kind of daily life. This caregiver, who has not worked for five years following various health problems, has not missed a single event since the start of the mobilization. Yellow vest from the start in 2019, she feels the same pressing need to express her general dissatisfaction, the feeling of being “left behind”, and, above all, the fear of a retirement “in survival mode”. “My former colleagues carry out dozens of toilets a day, turn over or carry patients who are sometimes heavy, chain meal intakes, work with a stopwatch on their buttocks, excuse me the expression. It’s about them that I think: how do you want to keep doing this at 64, 65, or 66?
RN “contesting” vote
As at the time of the yellow vests, Véronique feels that the movement appeals far beyond the usual demonstrators. “We are all fighting for the same thing: to live with dignity from our salary. People can no longer listen to the discourse of a ‘just’ reform, while they are always working harder to tighten their belts on everything”. A certain irritation which led several of his relatives and friends to vote for Marine Le Pen in the 2022 presidential election – in Saint-Dizier, the candidate of the National Rally (RN) won 54% of the votes last April -, then to confirm this choice by pushing the RN to win the legislative elections. In June, Laurence Robert-Dehault (RN) was thus elected MP for the 2nd constituency of Haute-Marne with 51.70% of the votes, dethroning the outgoing candidate François Cornut-Gentille. “There is a real distrust of politicians, which we have felt for a long time. People do not find themselves in any party… So they vote RN, which remains a vote of rejection of others”, comments the person concerned.
After having voted Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round of the presidential election, almost a year ago, Virginie claims to have voted white in the second. “For me, it was a choice between the plague and cholera. But deep down, I understand some relatives who voted RN: it’s a protest vote. When you feel like you’re no longer being listened to, you try it. all for all”. Sometimes, the inhabitants oscillate between two points of view. This is the case of Marie-Hélène, a retired accountant, who voted for Marine Le Pen “for the first time in her life” in the second round of the presidential election, after giving her vote to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “I’m more on the left… But for me, it was anything but Macron,” she explains. “Shopping baskets at 300 euros when there are two of us, the price of gasoline, and now retirement at 64… It’s no longer possible”.
For “one of the first times in her life”, too, Marie-Hélène therefore demonstrated in the streets against the pension reform. For her daughter, who will become “a doctor in a few months and should have the right to enjoy life” once her career is over, her working friends whom she does not see “working for another 10 years”, and for “her convictions “. Last year, after three years of retirement, the 60-year-old learned that she had cancer. “If the reform was already in place, I would therefore only have been able to enjoy a year of my retirement before falling ill. It is not understandable”.