A few tens of thousands of protestors pounded the street on Sunday in France, calling for salary hikes and voicing their opposition to the proposal to raise the legal retirement age to 65 by Emmanuel Macron.
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| [May day protest in Paris, France/May 01, 2022/Reauters] |
From the social to the political, there is often only one step, which will be happily passed this Sunday at the usual May 1st marches. Traditional, because it was, above all, a day of demands for the few tens of thousands of protestors who turned out. The unions' demand for wages was naturally linked to their refusal to raise the legal retirement age to 65, which Emmanuel Macron supports, not only because of the exceptional circumstances surrounding 2022 vintage, which was released only a week after the second round of the presidential election, but also because it occurred against the backdrop of the left's negotiations for a coalition around La France insoumise in the context of the legislative elections.
In Paris, the parade began in the Place de la République in the early afternoon and proceeded to the Place de la Nation, at the invitation of the inter-union CGT-Unsa-FSU-Solidaires. The procession was joined by the student and high school student groups Unef, VL, MNL, and FIDL. According to the company Occurrence, which was hired by a media collective to organize the event, it gathered together 21,000 people despite a few mishaps.
Philippe Martinez, the secretary general of the CGT, was at the helm and did not miss an opportunity to remind the audience of his messages to the president. His words are well understood, according to the AFP report, which includes "more incomes, higher quality employment, and not retirement at 65 but rather retiring at 60."
A signatory to the inter-union but extremely present, his alter persona, FO, Yves Veyrier, did not say anything further about his participation in the event. Wage raise on the horizon? According to him, the most important thing is to "redistribute wealth, specifically for the benefit of those who generate it, the workers," but he also emphasized the need of "participating in the funding of Social Security." And in this regard, we would want to state, as of May 1, that we are opposed to increasing the retirement age.
"Politicians are focusing on the parliamentary elections; we, on the other hand, believe that, when confronted with the authority that is in place, it will be through fights [...] that it will be achieved," said Simon Duteil, the leader of Solidaires. In the case of Unsa, Guillaume Trichard, its deputy secretary general, stressed the importance of buying power, which "takes precedence over the presidential election and will take precedence over the parliamentary elections." The CFDT, France's main labor union, took a stand, organizing a "May 1st devoted to the environment" despite a steadfast hostility to 65-year-olds on its own side of the political spectrum.
While being questioned in the morning on France Inter, Yves Veyrier also revealed that he had written to the presidents and vice presidents of each of the four other labor unions to see "how" they might coordinate their resistance to the change as a single body. While this was going on, and since they were unable to complete their task on time, the delegates of the left marched in scattered order. Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), the leader of rebellious France, spoke on a platform, expecting to reach an agreement with the PS, the Greens, the Communists, or the New Anti-Capitalist Party overnight.
Perhaps in order to avoid drawing all of the emphasis away from the left, Marine Le Pen, the defeated candidate of the National Rally (RN), broke her quiet on the occasion of International Workers' Day (May Day). She then left Jordan Bardella, the temporary party president, to lay a wreath in front of the monument of Joan of Arc in Paris, where she called for vengeance in the next parliamentary elections. According to her, voters will have a choice between lawmakers subservient to Emmanuel Macron, who will mindlessly approve all of his choices without any opposition, and deputies who support her initiative and her ideals for France, as said in a video released on his Twitter account.