The government is worried about any ‘blockages’ in the form of strikes and parliamentary obstructions ahead of the first day of social mobilisation against pension reforms on Thursday.
Thursday’s strike will be the first trade union response to the pension reform since it was presented last Tuesday by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.
The unions obviously hope that it can be a success: “it will be a very, very strong mobilisation,” the CGT’s General Secretary Philippe Martinez told France 3 on Sunday.
He assured that he would do everything to reach the symbolic mark of one million demonstrators, relying on “the number of buses ordered to go to the demonstrations” and on “the strike notices filed,” which would therefore be much larger than usual. In addition to the demonstrations, Martinez called for “strikes in companies, both public and private.”
Labour Minister Olivier Dussopt admitted on Sunday on France Inter that he expected significant participation in the strikes, because “there is a mobilisation carried by many [trade union] organisations.” All the employee unions are in fact committed to opposing the Borne government’s reform, particularly in that it would raise the legal retirement age from 62 to 64.
However, while he claims to respect the right to strike, the minister wants to ensure that “this does not result in the country being blocked.”
The unions have the support of the left-wing parties, which intend not only to support the demonstrations and call for strike action but also to use the tools at their disposal in parliament.
Mathilde Panot, president of the La France insoumise group in the Assembly, suggested that her group could table 75,000 amendments, which would considerably slow down the pace of debate on the reform project.
This is a strategy that the government is not comfortable with: Olivier Dussopt considers that such a number of amendments would “guarantee paralysis of the debate,” a “worry” for the minister, who fears that “opponents do not want debate but obstruction.”
In total, the debates in Parliament – Assembly and Senate combined – will last a maximum of fifty days from 6 February, the date of presentation of the draft to the National Assembly, because of the legislative vehicle chosen by the government, a financing bill for the social security, and not an independent bill only for the reform.
This tool also facilitates the use of Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows the adoption of the text without voting, which is useful in cases when there is a lack of a majority. But, for the moment, most of the right-wing parliamentarians (Les Républicains) support the government’s reform, partly modified according to their wishes.
(Davide Basso | EURACTIV.fr)
Source: euractiv.com
