French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64 continues to receive criticism. Once again, protestors are asking the government to take back its decision.
In a fresh strike, even high school students have shown their participation to support the protestors. The entire strikes have caused massive delays in trains, and also interrupted schools.
Over 1 million people participated in the demonstrations earlier this month, calling on Macron to take back the rule.
Even though polls show that two-thirds of voters are against the changes, the Macron government is going ahead with reforms. The changes will start to go through the National Assembly next week.
Without a majority in parliament, the government will have to get as much support from the right-wing Republicans as from its own MPs.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leader of the far left, said that France was at a turning point and that there would be even more protesters than on the first day of action on January 19.
Protests are likely to happen on the streets of all the big cities and some small towns. It is said that 11,000 police officers have been sent to cover the protests.
There were a lot of problems with transportation in and around Paris. Only one out of every three high-speed trains ran, and only two of the driverless metro lines worked normally. One of the main overground lines in the capital was said to have a lot of people on it.
At least three-quarters of workers at the big TotalEnergies oil refineries and fuel depots walked off the job, according to the CGT union.
One of the main teachers’ unions said that half of all nursery and primary school teachers would be on strike. Some high school students held protests outside of their schools, and students at the Sciences Po university in Paris said they would take over the building in support of the strikers.
“A lot of French people think that work is getting harder and harder. They want to work, but they don’t want to work in these conditions “Bruno Palier, a political scientist at Sciences Po, told the BBC about this.
The government has said that it might be willing to change some of the details of the reform, but it won’t back down on the main idea of raising the retirement age by two years to 64.
Prof. Philippe Aghion, an economist, said that the reforms were needed because France had a structural deficit of about €13 billion ($14 billion; £11 billion). He also said that raising the retirement age would help increase the number of people working in France.
He told the BBC, “That will give the government the credibility it needs to make some investments it needs to make in schools, in the hospitals it needs to improve, and in innovation and green industrialization.”