French unions plan 10 days of action to rattle Macron
Labor unions in France have warned President Emmanuel Macron about his plans to proceed with the implementation of economic and labor reforms, promising 10 days of protests to block the measure.
The warning came on Monday after the French government announced despite opposition that it would adopt the labor reforms on September 22. The changes reportedly simplify employment rules and make hiring and firing easier.
Truck drivers belonging to the conservative CFDT union, the largest in France, blocked some highways, including in the busy Pas-de-Calais area in the northeast, to show their anger at the labor code changes.
“Today is a warning,” said Patrick Blaise, CFDT’s secretary general. “If they don’t listen to us, CFDT’s truckers won’t stop there.”
The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union held a demonstration last week and drew as many as 220,000 people by police estimates and 400,000 by the union itself. The CGT is also calling for another round of nationwide rallies on September 21.
This comes as Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the radical leftist France Unbowed party, has called for a mass protest in Paris by the party’s 530,000 mostly young members on September 23. The opposition figure has described Macron’s proposals as a “social coup d’état.”
Other union groups have urged retirees and pensioners to demonstrate on September 28.
The 39-year-old French president has faced a slump in his approval rating since his resounding election victory in May. However, he shows no sign of diluting his ambitious plans to overhaul France’s economy, including bringing down unemployment stuck above 9 percent for a decade.
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