Pension reform. Mobilization remains strong in Lorient

CGT boss Philippe Martinez threatens to “more massive and renewable strikes” and “the government persists“with the pension reform. SUD-Rail and the CGT Cheminots call for the continuation of the strike this Wednesday, February 8, at the SNCF. On the Atlantic axis, there will be only one out of two TGVs in circulation and on average 1 out of 2 TERs will also be less disrupted in Brittany with 7 out of 10 TGVs and 9 out of 10 TERs. The movement will also continue in refineries, at EDF, at the Post Office and in ports.

An important mobilization, but in decline

This Tuesday, February 7, the mobilization remained important but less than during the two previous days: the CGT announced 2 million demonstrators against 750,000 for the police. In Nantes, 20,000 people according to the authorities and 45,000 according to the unions, in Rennes 25,000 demonstrators against 35,000 last week, and 15,000 according to the prefecture which also announces 13 arrests. 18,000 in Brest, 12,000 in Saint-Nazaire, 9,000 in Vannes, 8,000 in Lorient, around 7,500 in Angers and 3,000 in Cholet.

Yann Launay followed the procession from Lorient in which he met Juliette, 26, who parades with a sign that reads “Let my mother retire” : “With the reform, she will have to work even longer. I think that at some point, when you have worked all your life, you have the right to enjoy other important moments and no longer focus solely on work. I hope that the mobilization will not run out of steam.Today, there are still a lot of people and I hope that this will continue until the withdrawal of the reform. We give too much importance to the economy, not enough to the environment, to the human, and not enough to the precarious.

Muriel: they don’t care up there!

This new Lorient demonstration has remained good-natured, even if some participants do not hide it: their anger is rising. Muriel denounces the government’s stubbornness and indifference to situations like hers. She who sees retirement moving away, while she is on disability and cannot find work: “I live on €700 a month and I’m being asked to wait until I’m 67 to get a pension and no one is hiring us today. What do we have left? We worked for nothing, we raised kids for nothing, they don’t care up there! It’s pissed off to see how they treat us. We do not matter. We really are shit and we’re going to stay in shit for them.”

It is urgent to ask and discuss

The unions hope that the government will stop acting as if the streets were empty: for Loïc Fanouillère, police officer and president of the CFE-CGC Bretagne regional union, it is time for the government to cancel this reform and resume the discussions with social partners: “all those who think that there is an urgent need to reform pensions are liars. There is no urgency to reform, but there is an urgency to sit down and discuss. We cannot have so many citizens in the street without reacting.

We hope that the government will be able to listen to us. For the moment, everything is going peacefully, but it is true that there are behaviors and subliminal messages from the government that are fueling this tension which, for the moment, remains moderate on the ground.… The risk is that there will be branches that become radicalized in the face of quite brutal behavior on the part of this government.”

A new day of demonstration is planned for this Saturday, February 11, but without a strike. There should be no disruptions for holiday departures.