The attitude to work in France was said to be affected by the country’s revolt over raising the retirement age

The French Revolution: Union mobilizations are raising the age of retirement in protest of government proposals to increase the legal age for most workers – a warning from Prime Minister Macron

French schools, airports and trains will face heavy disruption Tuesday for the sixth time this year, as unions galvanize people nationwide in protest against government plans to raise the retirement age for most workers.

France’s civil aviation authority, meanwhile, has asked airlines to reduce scheduled flights by 20% and 30% at Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports in Paris respectively. Air France said about 20% of short-haul flights would be canceled but long-haul services would be maintained. The airline cautioned, however, that “last-minute delays and cancellations cannot be ruled out.”

SNCF said that only a small number of regional trains would operate and that four out of five trains on the TGV would be canceled.

Philippe Martinez, secretary general of the CGT, the biggest French union, said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche Sunday that unions “are moving up a gear” and he expected “that the mobilizations will continue and grow until the government listens to workers.”

Mr. Macron did not propose to increase the legal age of retirement. Instead, he was aiming for an across-the-board overhaul of the pension system’s dizzyingly complex architecture. The goal was to merge 42 different pension programs into what he said would be a fairer, unified system, using points that workers would accumulate and cash in upon retirement. But the plans left many confused and worried that their pensions would decrease.

The Paris protest on January 19, 2015: When the French parliament fails to implement Article 49.3 of the Constitution, its budget, and pensions

A record 1.3 million people took part in demonstrations on January 19, which brought the country to a standstill and shuttered the Eiffel Tower to visitors.

The pension legislation is necessary in order to tackle a funding deficit, but workers are angry about the reforms when costs are rising.

If there is no support from opposition lawmakers, Macron’s government could turn to Article 49.3 of the French constitution, a mechanism it has used several times already to push through budget-related bills without putting them to a parliamentary vote.

The government acknowledges that it will be hard for some to accept, but it insists that it is necessary in order to balance the system’s finances.

France has better state pensions than other countries. Expenditures on state pensions are more than other countries in the country, at around 14 percent of GDP.

But the government argues that rising life expectancies have left the system in an increasingly precarious state. In 2000, 2.1 workers paid into the system for every retiree, in 2020 it was 1.7, and in 2070 it would be 1.2, according to official projections.

Antoine Bozio, an economist at the Paris School of Economics, said that there was no short-term “explosion of the deficit” that needed to be addressed urgently. But “once you’ve said that the system isn’t in danger or on the verge of a catastrophe,” he said, “that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem” in the long term.

Editor’s Note: David A. Andelman, a contributor to CNN, twice winner of the Deadline Club Award, is a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor, author of “A Red Line in the Sand: Diplomacy, Strategy, and the History of Wars That Might Still Happen” and blogs at Andelman Unleashed. He formerly was a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and Paris correspondent for CBS News. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. You can find more opinion at CNN.

Is Paris burning? Macron’s response to the yellow vests protests in Paris is like smelling blood on the water, just in case the next four years is not enough

An American visitor told me she saw the cars on fire while walking home after dinner in Paris. They threw tear gas at Rue Royale. The street was on fire from both sides to get to my hotel. Is Paris burning? Yes, in my street. I smell smoke in my room.

Of course, this is not the first such conflagration Macron has weathered. French demonstrators went into the streets after the yellow vests movement because of the high fuel prices. Macron calculated, rightly, that the French eventually lose patience with extended strikes and unrest. That worked before. Macron met with union leaders, addressed the nation, laid out the costs and dropped fuel taxes that were a core of the protests. The stakes are higher, but it is not unreasonable for Macron to find a similar path out of this crisis.

From the far-right acolytes of Marine Le Pen to the far left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (unbowed) party, the political sharks are all smelling blood on the water, even though the next elections aren’t for another four years.

They stopped buses, subways and public works across France, barricades went up in the streets and were set ablaze. Garbage collectors walked off, protesting the rise in their retirement to 59 from 57 — among the many exceptions for earlier full retirement due to the nature of their jobs. The city of Paris has thousands of tons of garbage and is said to have the most prolific rat population in the world.

Can the Retirement Age be a Good Test for the Prescription of the First Prime Minister? Why Macron and his constituents cannot abide the Status Quo

It has already been used 11 times under the prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, who is the second youngest person to hold the position, behind none other thanMichel Rocard. The three prime ministers had invoked the provision 10 times in 10 years.

There are some tough decisions that have to be made in the halls of Parliament. Macron has bestowed a marvelous gift on his own plurality, indeed really any members of Parliament who might have even considered voting for the pension reform, by removing the need for them to declare themselves publicly for a deeply unpopular piece of legislation.

If a no-confidence vote succeeds — as early as Monday — will they do better with a new prime minister, also appointed by Macron? For that matter, would France even do better with its status quo, a retirement age of 62? I do not think that is the case, nor in Macron’s.

They find it is not a good job when they think that they don’t have enough time to do a good job, produce good products and good service, and that they are unable to recognize this kind of job.

The French Revolution and the Transition to Work: What do we really want from life in America? How France feels about the planned increase in the retirement age

Editor’s Note: Catherine Poisson is an associate professor of Romance Languages at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Literature and culture of France have been the focus of her research. The views expressed in the article are of her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

Most of us in this country have seen elderly people working in occupations that older people wouldn’t find taxing, while some people choose to work past retirement.

I return to France for several weeks each year, but have lived in the United States some 30 years and know both countries well. It seems clear to me that the kind of upheaval that happens in my birth country would be hard to imagine in America. Americans seem not to be able to understand the source of the boiling national rage felt by the French over the planned increase in the retirement age.

Four decades ago in the United States, the Social Security Administration made a decision that would have been very similar to what my friends in Canada are going through.

Life in France is not perfect. But French citizens have a generous health care system, which means workers pay next-to-nothing out of pocket for medical care. It is nearly free to attend a university. Unemployment benefits allow laid-off workers to sustain a reasonable quality of life while they look for their next jobs.

If Americans are baffled by the French willingness to fight to hold onto these hard-won benefits, it is in part because the two countries have very different ideas about what it means to be a worker. In the United States, work is an identity. You are what you do.

Work is defined as a period of life lasting roughly 40 years for people raised in French culture. And when that work is done, you are still young enough and fit enough to enjoy the best of what life has to offer. It is the norm that retirement years are used to travel, find new hobbies or care for children.

It’s part of our social compact: The French work hard during their most productive years during which time they pay what most Americans would consider usuriously high taxes. But then comes the much anticipated “Troisieme Age” — the “third age.” It is a concept French people have for their entire lives.

The “first age” is childhood. Many people are saddled with responsibilities during life’s second age. The third age however promises a good, healthy retirement free from want and worry — the kind of retirement many in the United States cannot even dream of. It is no wonder that people are willing to take to the streets to protect it.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/opinions/france-pension-reform-protests-macron-poisson/index.html

The Demonstrations of Emmanuel Macron are Demonstrating Impotence in a Regime of Exemplicism

His administration’s move to change the constitution so that it would ignore a vote in the National Assembly and raise the retirement age is an example of his imperial style. It’s an approach to governing that Macron has used multiple times, including when he passed a budget late last year. And as the protests wear on, there’s been another sign of government heavy-handedness: Macron now has resorted to the “requisition” of some striking workers — in short requiring them to return to their places of employment or risk losing their jobs.

There are alternatives to fix the problems of a future retirement fund shortfall. For starters, Macron might reverse his move to abolish the wealth tax. He might also reconsider corporate tax breaks that have benefited big business handsomely.

Such moves are, in my view, an admission of political impotence rather than strength. The president has lost sight of politics as a way of persuasion and is now ruling by decree. The police brutality against demonstrators protesting pension reforms led to hundreds of arrests, another sign that he lacks political deftness. The unions meanwhile show no sign of backing down, and are continuing to organize massive protests urging workers to stand firm and remain off the job.

The March for the Restoration of Social Democracy in Bordeaux as declared by the French Prime Minister Jean-Paul Darmanin on Thursday, 2nd day of Macron’s visit to Paris

What is the next thing? Surely the French will continue to take to the streets, something they always do with great gusto. It is not clear how this upheaval ends.

I think that my countrymen can teach America about protecting golden years when it comes to the latest moves to raise the retirement age in the US.

The unions called for strikes and protests on Tuesday when the British king arrives in Bordeaux for the second day of his trip. The heavy wooden door of the elegant Bordeaux City Hall was set afire and quickly destroyed Thursday evening by a members of an unauthorized demonstration, the Sud Ouest newspaper said.

The British monarch will be welcomed and treated well by Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin as he visited police headquarters Thursday night as fires still burned in some Paris neighborhoods.

The minister said that troublemakers on the left want to take down the state and take over the institutions.

The demonstrations were held a day after Macron further angered his critics by standing strong on the retirement bill that his government forced through parliament without a vote.

While the president is trying to turn the page, the social and union movement confirms the determination of the world of workers and youth to obtain the withdrawal of the reform. It called for localized action this weekend and new nationwide strikes and protests Tuesday.

In Paris, street battles between police and black-clad, masked groups who attacked at least two fast food restaurants, a supermarket and a bank reflected intensifying violence and drew attention away from the tens of thousands of peaceful marchers.

Police, pelted by Molotov cocktails, objects and fireworks, charged multiple times and used tear gas to disperse rioters. A haze of tear gas fumes covered part of the Place de l’Opera, where demonstrators converged at the march’s end. Darmanin said radicals numbered some 1,500.

In the western cities of Rennes and Lorient, an administrative building was attacked, and the courtyard of the police station was set afire, there were other marches marred by violence.

Work strikes are the only way out – strikers are the withdrawal of the law, and the retirement age of the UK is 66 to 68

“We are trying to say before the law is enacted … that we have to find a way out and we continue to say that the way out is the withdrawal of the law,” the chief of the moderate CFDT trade union, Laurent Berger, told The Associated Press.

About 25% of teachers in the elementary and middle schools walked off the job on Thursday, according to the Education Ministry.

At the Gare de Lyon, several hundred strikers walked on the railway tracks, holding flares and chanting, “Macron, go away.”

“Maybe our holidays won’t be so great, because employees who work in public transport are not paid on strike days,” said Monin, who stressed that he works in public transport. “But I think it’s worth the sacrifice.”

In the northern suburbs of Paris, several dozen union members blocked a bus depot in Pantin, preventing about 200 vehicles from getting out during rush hour.

The protest followed a strike of a similar magnitude in January and days of smaller walkouts and demonstrations in between. And more industrial action is planned for next week.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the retirement age is between 66 and 67, depending on the year you were born. Current legislation envisages a further rise from 67 to 68 in Britain between 2044 and 2046 (although the timing of this increase is being reviewed and could change).