French pension strikes resume ahead of constitutional ruling

FRENCH unions are holding strikes and protests on Thursday (Apr 13) against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform, seeking to maintain pressure on the government before a ruling on the law’s constitutionality. 

The Bill to raise France’s minimum retirement age by two years to 64 has already passed parliament, but labour organisations want to keep pushing Macron to back down with a 12th round of action.

Emboldened by polls showing broad public opposition to the reform, unions will lead marches across France’s largest cities with the backing of left-wing political parties. Workers in sectors including railways, public transport, and education are expected to walk out. Airlines were ordered by the aviation authority to cut 20 per cent of flights at airports in Nantes, Bordeaux and Toulouse. 

Garbage workers in Paris will resume an open-ended strike, only days after streets in the capital had finally been cleared of mounds of trash.

Unions and the government are now focused on the decision of the Constitutional Council, due to be announced on Friday evening. The nine-member body made up chiefly of former politicians and senior civil servants said it will rule on the law and an opposition-backed request to put the reform to a referendum. 

The route of the marches in Paris will pass near the Council, at the Palais Royal gardens near the Louvre museum. Violent groups among protesters have attacked banks and shops, and last week set fire to the La Rotonde restaurant, where Macron celebrated his victory in the first round of the 2017 presidential election.

“There are always points that are protected, and that will obviously be the case for the Constitutional Council and other sensitive sites on the route,” Paris police chief Laurent Nunez said on RMC radio. 

It’s unlikely the council will declare the entire law unconstitutional – something that’s happened only twice since its creation in 1958. But it could rule that portions of the law shouldn’t have been folded into the supplementary social-security budget Bill that the government used as a vehicle to enact the pension reform. Unless the council rejects the reform outright, some level of conflict over pensions will likely continue at least until Macron enacts the changes later this year.

Macron told a news conference in Amsterdam on Wednesday during a state visit to the Netherlands that he planned to meet with unions after the Council ruling. He didn’t give details.

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The strikes seem to be losing momentum. The Paris metro and international train routes like Eurostar and Thalys are expected to operate almost normally. Strikes at TotalEnergies refinery units ended over the past few days and deliveries have resumed. Laurent Berger, the head of the prominent CFDT union, said he won’t spend the next six months in demonstrations, suggesting the frontline against the reform is no longer in the streets. 

The interior ministry is expecting between 400,000 and 600,000 people in the street on Thursday, Agence France Presse reported. That would mark the third consecutive decline in turnout. 

Polls show that French people back the union-led efforts to oppose Macron with strikes and protests, although that support may wane if the overhaul passes the test of the Council. According to a survey of 1,015 French adults by Ifop for the Journal du Dimanche, 48 per cent would want the strikes and protests to end if the ruling validates the Bill.

Macron’s government says raising the pension age is vital to boost employment rates and halt the build-up of deficits in the massive public retirement system as the population ages. Unions say changing the age thresholds to claim a full pension will disproportionately penalise the least well-off and that there are other options to balance the system, including higher taxes on business and the wealthy.

The conflict over pensions is threatening to engulf Macron’s agenda of pro-business economic change that he has led since first taking office in 2017. Backing down at this late stage of the legislative process would be a hobbling political defeat, yet going ahead risks destroying relations with unions that the government needs to work with on future overhauls.

In the short term, the strikes and protests are also beginning to drag on the economy as some sectors such as oil refining and hospitality are particularly hit. The Bank of France said earlier this week that economic output likely declined in March, although resilience in January and February means the country avoided a contraction over the quarter. BLOOMBERG