FRANCE: Public sector workers went on strike across France on Thursday in a “warning shot” for President Emmanuel Macron against his multi-front reform drive, with cancelled trains and flights causing travel headaches for thousands.
Many schools, daycare centres and libraries were closed ahead of demonstrations planned for the afternoon, while other public services such as garbage collection were disrupted in Paris and other cities.
“The government needs to be paying much more attention to how things really are,” Force Ouvriere union chief Jean-Claude Mailly told BFM television, citing “serious worries” among public sector workers.
The walk-outs and demonstrations are the latest test of strength for 40-year-old centrist Macron as he pushes ahead with a new phase of his agenda to overhaul state rail operator SNCF and other public services.
Thousands of public servants had already staged a one-day strike in October against his plans to cut 120,000 jobs over his five-year term, as well as a pay freeze and a plan for more outsourcing and voluntary buyouts that unions say will remove job security.
France’s once fearsome unions have regularly forced governments into policy U-turns in the past, but Macron and his ministers have vowed not to yield.
More than 140 protests have been planned across France in total, with the biggest set to take place at the Bastille monument in Paris in the afternoon, where unions expect 25,000 demonstrators.
The Paris demonstration, bolstered by rail workers contesting plans to end the special status for new hires at the SNCF, is “a warning shot” against the proposed changes, said the UNSA rail union chief Roger Dillenseger.