Last Thursday, the anticipated national strike began in protest of President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to revise the country’s pension system.
According to labor unions participating in the strike, a million and a half people participated in demonstrations across the country.
As expected, business was not “as usual,” with most trains, subways, and buses canceled. Many schools were closed. The demonstrations were peaceful for the most part, however, there were isolated confrontations with police using tear gas.
President Macron, a former investment banker at Rothschild & Cie Banque, with a 23 percent approval rating, is regarded as “arrogant” and “disconnected” with the working people who are protesting one of the world’s most favorable pension systems, which he wants to change.
Macron contends the pension system, some $20 billion in debt, is too complex and has inherent inequalities giving some workers earlier retirement and better benefits than others. He wants to combine the approximately 40 different pension rates and integrate them into one system.
The current strike builds off the Yellow Vest movement that began last fall and brought people to the streets in protest of rising petrol taxes.
Major unions, who are leading this national strike, previously have not been supportive of the Yellow Vest movement. Among the large unions behind the demonstrations are transport workers, air traffic controllers, teachers, hospital workers, fire fighters, and lawyers.
The strikes, protests, and demonstrations continue. Yesterday, over 800,000 people took to the streets.
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe said certain benefits favored some unions and that people would have to work “a little longer.”
Public support of the national strike will be crucial. Last year, when the Yellow Vests led the strike, the government was receptive to some demands and kept police away from confrontations. However, when support for the Yellow Vests dropped below 50 percent in polls, Macron ordered more aggressive police control.
According to the poll released last Thursday, public support was close to 70 percent the first day of the strike.
Monday morning highway traffic into Paris was backed up for over 300 miles. All but two of the Metro subway lines remain shut down.
Details of the government’s new pension plan will be announced tomorrow.
TREND FORECAST: From Chile to Lebanon, from Ecuador to Iraq… as reported in the Trends Journal, the people are taking to the streets in protest of economic policies they claim favor the financial/political elite at the cost of the working class.
These protests will continue to escalate, governments will be overthrown, new political parties and movements will emerge, and those in power, unwilling to relent, will crack down with military/police repression.
Again, as Gerald Celente has long stated: “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”
