Thousands of protesters against unemployment insurance reform in France

At the instigation of intermittent entertainment workers, several thousand people marched on Friday April 23 in France to demand the withdrawal of the unemployment insurance reform, which is due to come into force on 1er July.

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These events were organized by the CGT and Solidaires union organizations and associations such as the National Movement of the Unemployed and Precarious (MNCP), to which groups of intermittent workers who have been occupying cultural venues for several weeks have joined.

The latter, who are however not directly concerned by the reform, made up the bulk of the procession, demanding an extension of their white year as well as the immediate reopening of cultural places.

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“Too long, the intermission”

“Living on art is an art of living”, “Festival: the summer entubé”, could we read on the signs in Paris, where several thousand people, often young, walked in a festive atmosphere in the afternoon from the Place d’Italie to the Place de la Bastille.

Dressed in black clothes with a white cross, the nearly 300 Marseille demonstrators descended the Canebière towards the Old Port by slamming the lids of technical equipment boxes.

During the demonstration against the reform of unemployment insurance in Marseille, on April 23.

In Nantes, the procession of 1,500 demonstrators had gathered at the Graslin Theater, occupied, carrying signs “Too long, the intermission” or “Macron resignation”.

In Lyon, 600 demonstrators marched from the National Popular Theater of Villeurbanne to the Opéra de Lyon, two places occupied respectively by intermittents and students from artistic fields since mid-March. They were 200 in Saint-Etienne with intermittents organizing a clapping and chanting: “We are all essential” on the tune of We Will Rock You, by Queen.

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In Lille, 500 people demonstrated behind a banner “Stop layoffs, relocations and job cuts”. “It is out of the question to have a reform that will break rights with all the PES in progress: Nocibé, Flunch, Auchan, Carrefour”, denounced Jean-Paul Delescaut, secretary of the CGT in the North.

Less favorable to job seekers

In the sights of the demonstrators, the entry into force, this summer, of the new method of calculating benefits, which will be less favorable to job seekers who regularly alternate periods of unemployment and activity.

According to Unédic, 1.15 million people who will be entitled to unemployment insurance during the year following the 1er July should thus receive a lower monthly allowance than with the current rules (by 17% on average) but with, at the same time, a “Theoretical duration of compensation” lengthened (fourteen months on average against eleven before the reform).

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The Minister of Labor, Elisabeth Borne, assured, this Friday on the LCI channel, “To have heard these oppositions” But “Really thinks that the current system needs to be changed”. “Some have been able to cope with it, we see that they have been completely hit by the crisis, to such an extent that we had to set up exceptional assistance for these employees who alternated on short contracts, who did not have been able to work in 2020, to provide them with an income of 900 euros ”, she stressed.

The World with AFP