The workers of the Paris transport system have already announced that they will continue to strike until Monday, if the government does not give them concrete answers, while other unions will decide on Friday whether to continue the strike in the coming days. The airline Air France has announced that it has canceled 30 percent of its domestic flights scheduled for today, and in addition many Eurostar trains connecting Paris to London through the English Channel have been canceled.
What happened on Thursday
On the first day of the strike, all the main categories of workers joined, including railway workers – who have long been protagonists of mobilizations against the government – lawyers, police officers, doctors, nurses and airport personnel. According to the Ministry of the Interior, about 800,000 people took part in the strike, of which 65,000 in Paris alone, while the unions spoke of 1.5 million participants, of which 250,000 in Paris.
In Paris they closed 11 metro lines and the strike will last until Monday 9 December, while the strike of the SNCF state railway company will last until Friday: 90 percent of high-speed trains and 80 percent of regional trains they have been canceled and there have been several cancellations even between the flights. Some of the city's main tourist attractions, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Orsay Museum and the Palace of Versailles have also remained closed. The CGT union said workers on seven of the country's eight oil refineries went on strike on Thursday, and if the strike continues over the next few days there could be fuel shortage problems.
The demonstrations took place mostly peacefully but in some cases there were moments of tension following clashes between protesters and police. In Paris, where there was the most important demonstration and thousands of people marched through the streets of the city blocking the city, 71 people were arrested and reports of vandalism from different parts of the city arrived. There were participated demonstrations and clashes also in Nantes – where the police fired tear gas at a group of protesters -, Bordeaux and Rennes. The unions dissociated themselves from these episodes of violence.
The Macron reform aims to streamline the French pension system, which is considered complex and inefficient, given that it is made up of 42 pension schemes, 10 of which are available only to SNCF employees. Reforming the system, however, involves removing benefits for many categories of workers and raising their retirement age, in addition to changing the way pensions are calculated: the French government would like to introduce a system based on the actual contributions paid, while the regimes in force allow many workers to calculate their pension based on the contribution years they paid the most money.
France spends 14 percent of its GDP on pensions, two points lower than Italy but six points higher than the OECD average. On average, French pensioners receive 61 percent of their final salary, a figure comparable to that perceived in Italy but very rare elsewhere.
Source link
https://www.ilpost.it/2019/12/06/francia-sciopero-generale-secondo-giorno/
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