France is going through a day of strike this Tuesday (18), especially visible in transport, to demand a salary increase to compensate for inflation and denounce the government’s response to the stoppage in refineries.
In the morning, at the Parisian Gare de Lyon, the French armed themselves with patience to catch the train. “Usually it takes me an hour and a half. Today I have two or three to go,” Yera Diallo told AFP.
In Toulouse (south), Frédéric Mercier Hadisyde, a 58-year-old engineer, arrived two hours earlier than usual to catch the train to Paris. “I was afraid of disturbances, so I organized myself. I sympathize with them, I understand them”, he confessed.
According to a survey by Elabe, 49% of French people disapprove of the strike, which in the transport sector could be prolonged, the CGT union said on Tuesday, just days before the start, on Friday, of a two-week school vacation in the France.
Students, civil servants, merchants, energy and transport workers were summoned by the CGT union and three others to defend the right to strike and demand a salary increase.
“We ask for a minimum wage of 2,000 euros (R$ 10,374), which is equivalent to an increase of 300 euros (R$ 1,556)”, said the secretary general of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, on RTL radio, also advocating a readjustment of according to inflation.
France, the second largest economy in the European Union, recorded in September the lowest harmonized inflation rate in the euro zone, 6.2%, below other economies such as Germany (10.9%), Italy (9.5%) and Spain (9.3%), according to Eurostat.
But the social climate is tense. The fear of losing purchasing power was the main concern of the French during the last election cycle from April to June and the call to save energy to avoid blackouts in winter makes the environment even more hostile.
As France began to turn the page on the pandemic, Russia invaded Ukraine, which, along with Moscow’s response to Western sanctions, sent energy and food prices soaring.
With the experience of the “yellow vests” social protest, whose trigger in 2018 was the rise in fuel prices, the government of liberal President Emmanuel Macron quickly approved measures to limit the rise in energy prices.
“Superprofits”
But the last straw for the unions was that the government requested strikers from TotalEnergies to alleviate shortages at gas stations.
In addition to the salary increase, the strikers are calling for a better distribution of the profits made by the energy giant – more than US$ 10 billion (R$ 52.69 billion) in the first half of 2022 -, a demand that more than half of French people understand.
By refusing to tax these “super-profits” at the national level, Macron has placed the government “in the camp of the big bosses, in total disconnection from a large part of the French who suffer from inflation every day”, according to an editorial in the daily Libération.
The Executive is even willing to resort to a controversial parliamentary method, called 49.3, to approve its 2023 budget without the necessary vote by the National Assembly (lower house), which is currently debating it.
Macron thus seeks to avoid amendments adopted by deputies against the opinion of his government, such as the increase in the tax on “super dividends”. Executive spokesman Olivier Véran announced that he could activate this procedure on Wednesday (19).
With this measure, the president risks reinforcing his “authoritarian” image, despite having promised to change after his re-election in April, and further straining the atmosphere before the arrival of the explosive pension reform in early 2023.
The delay in the retirement age from 62 to 65 that Macron wants to implement clashes with frontal opposition from unions, including the reformist CFDT, and opposition from the left and the far right.
His first attempt in 2019 and 2020 also sparked massive street protests, but the 44-year-old leader, who has made this reform one of his workhorses, has even threatened to dissolve the Assembly and call new elections if it is not passed now.
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