PARIS (Reuters) – The unions are calling on the French people to take to the streets en masse this Saturday for a seventh day of mobilization against the pension reform carried out by the government, and in particular the postponement of the legal retirement age from 62 to 64 years.

More than 200 demonstrations are planned throughout France while the Senate should decide by Sunday evening on the text of the law, and President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that he refused to receive the inter-union to “preserve this parliamentary time” .

As a sign of its determination, the government resorted to Article 44.3 on Friday to impose a single vote on the Senate on the entire Social Security amending bill, which includes the pension reform, and not on each amendment which remains to be examined by Sunday evening.

The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, justified this initiative by what he describes as “systematic obstruction” of the left, while the senators have already adopted the emblematic measure of the reform – the decline in the legal age.

Article 44.3 also has the advantage for the government of allowing it to retain in the final version of the text only the amendments that suit it, and not all those that have been voted on so far.

It will then be up to a joint committee of seven deputies and seven senators to meet – probably on Wednesday – to try to agree on a common version of the bill and, if so, it could be submitted to the final vote of the National Assembly and the Senate next Thursday.

MP Sylvain Maillard, who will participate in the joint committee as vice-president of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance group, said on Saturday on franceinfo convinced that the government would have a majority to have its text adopted both in the Assembly than in the Senate.

“IF THAT’S WHAT THEY WANT…”

The unions do not intend to disarm, however, and warn against a radicalization of the protest movement against a “blind” government in the face of the strongest social mobilization for decades.

“The executive acts as if the demonstrations do not exist… We do not condone violence, ever. Now, of course, on the ground, the base says: “If that’s what they want, we will show them that we can be more determined than that”, declared Frédéric Souillot, the general secretary of Force Ouvrière, on RMC.

Transport remains disrupted this weekend, while the strike was renewed on Saturday morning at TotalEnergies refineries and fuel depots, a spokesman for the group told Reuters.

The unions are comforted by the support of a clear majority of French people for their mobilization, approved at 63% (-1 point in one week), according to an Elabe poll for BFMTV published on Saturday. They are less likely (54%) to approve of the blocking of sectors such as refineries, transport or waste collection.

Faced with the risk of hardening and while the strike seems to be marking time in certain sectors, in a context of high inflation, the deputy general secretary of the CFDT, Marylise Léon, once again expressed her union’s doubts about the advisability to declare a renewable strike.

“There is a principle of reality. To say renewable strike for ten days is to ask the impossible of certain workers”, she underlined.

“All sectors are on the street and that’s what counts,” insisted the union official, who refused to say whether the CFDT would continue to call for mobilization if the pension reform is passed in Parliament.

(Written by Tangi Salaün)

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