Retreats. Human tide against reform in the west – HIT WEST

The demonstrators against the pension reform, currently being debated in the Senate, were very numerous this Tuesday again, much more than during the previous days: 150,000 people demonstrated in Brittany, including 14,000 in Vannes, 18,000 in Lorient, or around 20 000 in Brest. In Rennes, they were between 19,000 to 40,000 according to the sources, with at the end of the procession clashes and tear gas launched at Place de Bretagne and Place Sainte-Anne. Eleven people were arrested. In Nantes, the prefecture announces 30,000 people against 75,000 for the unions and there were eight police custody, on the sidelines of the parade. 19,000 other people marched in Angers, 15,000 in Saint-Nazaire and 10,000 others in Laval.

Mobilization also in small towns

A thousand demonstrators were identified in Clisson, a small Italian city in Loire-Atlantique and 2,000 in Ploërmel in Morbihan, a figure on the rise. Some like Nadia expected an even greater mobilization. Aged 40, Nadia is employed in a meat processing factory, and she came to demonstrate with some colleagues:

“I was at work this morning: up at 3 a.m., (I) started at 4 a.m. and left at 7 a.m., but there are not many colleagues who have followed unfortunately. There, we demonstrate, but I find that it is too calm. You have to block outright to push until they react. I challenge him to come with us to work Mr. Macron, that he “put his ass” in the factory and that he tries to see what it is to work on the assembly line. We both work, we have two children and at the end of the month it’s ric-rac, but we both go to work. When we see the poverty wages and there, they push us up to 64 years old: we will kill ourselves at work, we will leave with broken bones, crushed backs … I am disgusted.

It concerns us all!

Young people remained quite rare, in the Morbihan procession, even if we could come across a few high school students and students like Pierre, in law at Rennes 1, who parades in a spirit of solidarity and cohesion: “whether you’re young or on the verge of retirement, it concerns us all. We must be able to count on each other, have a well-funded pension system that allows us to finish our work period with dignity.. We have other means than increasing the retirement age to continue to finance our retirement system. This will put those who toil every day even more in difficulty, while those who profit from the system will remain in their golden square! Two-thirds of French people are opposed to pension reform and we must show it by all means!”

You can’t run a country like a multinational

In the processions, some were also demonstrating for the first time, while others were on their second or third day of “walking”. Still others have not missed a day of action, like Sylvain, met by our reporter Yann Launay, and who hopes that the government, this time, will take the mobilization into account: “when you’re wrong, you have to know how to accept and apologize and don’t let things get out of hand. It is irresponsibility. You cannot run a country like a multinational. We run a country with people who need to be encouraged… (atmosphere)”

“The government remains deaf no matter what”

A few tractors led the way, in the colors of the Confédération paysanne. Farmers as a whole have been discreet since the beginning of the movement, satisfied to have obtained the calculation of their retirement on their 25 best years. But for Thibaut, a farmer in Monteneuf, there is no question of resigning himself to working longer. The 30-year-old says he is ready to mobilize until the reform is withdrawn:

“Every time more and more of us take to the streets, nothing happens… If the government makes no effort for us, there is no reason for the movement to stop. are just people who live completely uncorrelated to our reality. Me, I’m willing to take on the role of a deputy and have them come and take my place, to get up very early every day, to do days that never end and (I would like) to see if they arrive get by with the little money we make at the end of the month.“

The strike will continue this Wednesday at the SCNF and at the Donges refinery (44), and other demonstrations are planned as part of the international day of struggle for women’s rights. The inter-union wants to “denounce the major social injustice of this pension reform against women”.