Against a background of inflation and solidarity with the movement initiated by the refiners of TotalEnergies, an interprofessional mobilization was launched by four unions on Tuesday. Among the sectors on strike, transport, nuclear, the civil service… “I understand that a certain number of employees may express expectations of improved purchasing power. But I tell them that we are the government in Europe which has protected its inhabitants the most in terms of inflation”, said Christophe Béchu, Minister for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, guest of Europe Matin on Tuesday.
“The increases on gas or electricity have been absorbed by the public authorities, the costs at the pump have been reduced by rebate policies and we have the lowest inflation in Europe”, he said. it detailed.
Social unrest is rising
However, social unrest has been felt for several weeks now. With inflation at 5.6% over one year in September, according to INSEE data, truck drivers, nurses, teachers, railway workers want to make their anger heard. The “march against the high cost” organized by the Nupes on Sunday was the demonstration of this. It gathered 140,000 people according to the organizers, 30,000 according to the authorities.
“We are more in a form of preventive strike”
An anger that the Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion agrees to understand. “That there are demands for wage negotiations in companies, I understand it, that there are preventive strikes, strikes to put pressure on a context already complicated by both a geopolitical situation linked to the war in Ukraine, by the economic situation in the broad sense, I think that we must be careful and once again, the time for dialogue, it is not the time for blocking”, he launched on Europe 1.
But the Minister regrets that “in a certain number of companies on which, today, strike orders have been launched, we are more in a form of preventive strike than in a culture of dialogue”. “We are totally determined to ensure that this situation returns to normal as quickly as possible without deploying an arsenal that would be contrary to the law,” he announced.
“Dialogue yes, blockage no”
“The line of the government is: dialogue yes, blocking no. We therefore left time for social dialogue. We then made sure to wait for majority agreements to be signed in the companies. And where these majority agreements are signed, we requisition when minorities block a majority agreement”, explained the Minister for the Ecological Transition about the strike in the TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil refineries.
“There is a strategy of convergence of struggles”
“We are here because a union minority decides both not to respect majority agreements which have nevertheless resulted, following negotiations, in substantial wage increases, and that there is a strategy, I would almost say political, of junction or convergence of the struggles with the march on Sunday and the calls for the day today. I understand that many French people are not fooled by what is an attempt to divert the social dialogue to do something else with it,” he said.