The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will face the first major street protests of his leadership on Tuesday as one of the country’s biggest trade unions demonstrates against his overhaul of labour laws.
The leftwing CGT, France’s second biggest trade union, is leading scores of protests across France, with public sector workers, train staff and energy sector workers expected to join.
It is the first test of whether opposition to Macron’s pro-business plans to loosen labour rules could translate into a broader street protest movement, which the president is determined to face down.
Four thousand strikes have been called by the CGT with rail workers, students and civil servants urged to protest in cities from Paris to Marseille and Toulouse. In Paris on Tuesday morning, the transport disruption was limited to two commuter train lines. High-speed train-lines and the Eurostar were running normally. Air traffic controllers had also been urged to strike, and Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair said it had cancelled 110 flights scheduled for Tuesday.
In a separate move, funfair operators — angry over unrelated fairground reforms voted in by the previous government — blocked traffic on the outskirts of several cities on Tuesday morning.
The CGT’s secretary general, Philippe Martinez, said more than 180 demonstrations against the new labour laws were planned across the country, warning that he sensed “very strong discontent”.
The CGT’s main street march through Paris will take place on Tuesday afternoon.
Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker and centrist who was elected in May against the far-right Marine Le Pen, is seeking to style himself as a pro-business reformer who would never give in to street protests.
A row broke out this weekend over Macron’s strong language after he said in a speech in Athens that he would “not yield anything, either to the lazy, the cynics or the extremes”.
Many on the left expressed outrage, saying the president was implying workers who opposed him were lazy. Indeed, the word “lazy” is likely to become the rallying slogan of the anti-Macron demonstrations. The CGT’s Martinez called Macron’s comments “scandalous”.
Asked on Monday whether he regretted using the word, Macron replied “absolutely not”, saying he had not been referring to workers but to previous French leaders who he said were not brave enough to make sweeping changes in France.
Macron is facing street demonstrations sooner after taking office than any other recent French leader. This is in part because his labour law changes are being fast-tracked and pushed through parliament with record speed using executive orders. The laws include a cap on payouts for unfair dismissals and greater freedom for employers to hire and fire. The labour rules will affect all private sector workers in France. However, state sector employees are likely to make up the largest number of CGT demonstrators on Tuesday.
The president – who is keen to avoid street protests spreading to other contentious proposed changes including to the pensions system, unemployment benefits and training schemes – said last month, during a trip to Romania, that the French people “hated reforms”, but that he was proposing a “transformation” to fire up the country’s economy and make it a leader in Europe. In Athens last week, he lamented that France “is not open to reforms … We rebel, we resist, we circumvent. This is what we are like.”
The prime minister, Edouard Philippe, insisted the street protests would not result in any changes to the proposed laws. He said the new labour laws had been spelled out to voters before the presidential and parliament elections as the solution to France’s mass-unemployment problem. Joblessness, at 9.5%, is about twice that in Britain or Germany.
Separate street demonstrations led by the leftwing MP Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his leftist parliamentary grouping, France Unbowed, will take place on 23 September.So far, the Élysée seems confident it can face down protests, in part because opposition is fragmented. Macron’s new political grouping, La République En Marche, controls parliament, while the next biggest party on the right is bitterly divided. Although other trade unions were critical of the labour law changes – despite a consultation period – no other leaders of big unions are joining the CGT street demonstrations on Tuesday. Crucially, the CFDT, which is France’s biggest union, is not taking part.
Opinion polls show voters do not like the labour reforms overall but back many of its individual measures, including direct negotiations between bosses and their staff in small firms.
Macron’s popularity has slipped over the summer, with recent polls showing that only about 40% of French voters are satisfied with his performance in office. Analysts attribute the disaffection to a mix of communication problems and political missteps in which his initial measures on tax and reforms were seen as muddled and unfair, benefiting the rich more than the poor.
No comments:
Post a Comment