In 2023, they marched in compact ranks, carried by the same momentum against pension reform. This time, you will have to go to Paris, Montauban or Nancy to spot the presence of their respective leaders in public space. On the occasion of 1er-May, the main employee organizations mobilize in dispersed order, with varied slogans. The CGT wants to stand up “against corporate rapacity and government violence” – referring to the executive’s plan to introduce tougher provisions for unemployment compensation. The CFDT, for its part, pleads “for a more ambitious Europe”less than six weeks before the vote to designate the deputies sitting in Strasbourg.
The actors present therefore do not speak with the same voice, on this International Workers’ Day. Is this a return to the dispersion that prevailed before the battle against the postponement to 64 of the age of eligibility for a pension? Not necessarily since yesterday’s allies maintain their exchanges while building, piecemeal, coalitions of variable geometry.
On Wednesday, the CGT, the FSU, Solidaires and five youth defense movements are calling to take to the streets together. According to the first of these organizations, it is planned, in “more than 260 [lieux] », rallies and demonstrations, one of which will leave from Place de la République to join Place de la Nation, in Paris. The UNSA will be present in the procession which will deploy in the capital, as will the CFDT – at the initiative of its regional union. FO, for its part, will walk between the Places d’Italie and the Commune-de-Paris. As for the CFE-CGC, it will not be in the streets, while the CFTC lets its territorial structures decide on possible initiatives to take.
We are far from the harmony displayed a year ago, to the day. “The mobilization of the eight main unions against the postponement of the legal retirement age was self-evident since an immense majority of employees were against the measure”explains sociologist Guy Groux, member of the Sciences Po Political Research Center. But once the adoption of the reform was recorded, he continues, the actors present have, more or less, “retaken the place that was theirs before the constitution of the inter-union during the summer of 2022, with a reformist bloc around the CFDT, the CFTC and the UNSA, a “protest camp” made up of the CGT and its allies – FSU and Solidaires –, and two confederations which are inserted between these two poles – the CFE-CGC and FO”.
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