The third pension reform strikes in a month in France drew significantly less people on Tuesday, however another is planned in just a matter of days.
According to union sources from the CGT, two million people were out in the streets of France on Tuesday versus the more conservative French Ministry of the Interior figure of 757,000. Unions in Nice set their own numbers at 20,000 marchers, though police estimated around 6,300.
The turnout, whilst not exactly disappointing, has re-energised strike organisers, who are now looking ahead to Saturday 11th February, when another strike is in the offing.
“Tonight’s message will be a call to demonstrate massively on Saturday,” said Laurent Berger, the CFDT secretary general, on Tuesday. He suggested the diminished numbers were caused by “a small handicap with the holidays”, which started in Zone A this week, adding, “[But] the parliamentary debate is until the end of March, and in March there will be no more holidays.”
CGT leader Philippe Martinez called for strikes to be “harder, more massive, more numerous”, with the intention of rallying workers into taking to the streets this coming Saturday.
Though the strikes are largely over for many for now, the SNCF is continuing its actions into Wednesday, with the company saying that regular service will be disrupted, making for difficult commutes. TER traffic is severely curtailed in the Alpes-Maritimes region. For information on what is running and when, visit the website.
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Photo source: Dean Moriarty on Pixabay