French unions are geared up for a fifth day of strikes on Thursday against President Emmanuel Macron’s overhaul of the pensions system, which is being debated in parliament.
Demonstrations are planned throughout France, but the day is expected to be less disruptive than previous strikes this year, with schools largely unaffected and the Paris metro running normally.
A strike by railway workers will disrupt TGV and regional train services, while air traffic will be hit at airports in Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon, Montpellier and Nantes. Thirty percent of flights are expected to be cancelled at Paris’s Orly airport.
Meanwhile workers in the oil, electricity and gas sector are also being urged to town tools. With petrol stocks full, companies say no shortages are expected at services stations.
Bigger strikes to come
Philippe Martinez, head of the hardline CGT union, told BFMTV that “stronger, bigger and more numerous” renewable strikes would happen if the government did not pay attention to demands.
Trade unions have already united in a cross-sector call to bring the country to a standstill on 7 March, with media reports saying unions understood that lost salary from strike days would affect the movement.
Protest numbers dipped in the third day of action earlier this month before picking up again last Saturday when families and students joined hundreds of street rallies in cities and towns across the nation.
Unions said more than 2.5 million protesters had turned out to keep up pressure on the government over its unpopular move to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The Interior Ministry put that figure at 963,000, but admitted that protest numbers had grown.
Macron put raising the retirement age and encouraging the French to work more at the heart of his re-election campaign last year, but polls suggest that two-thirds of people are against the changes.
A cross-union petition against the reform project had amassed more than a million signatures on Wednesday less than a week after it was launched.
