France nationwide strike and protests November 5 wage demands, Digi Mart USA News (France): A nationwide interprofessional day of strikes and protests over wages is expected to partly disrupt the country this Thursday, November 5. The day follows a tumultuous autumn of social unrest in France and was announced at the start of October, after the public service mobilization of September 29.
Unions will organize strikes and demonstrations across the country to seek responses to their demands, particularly on wages. Earlier, for three consecutive Saturdays, a movement against the rising cost of living had emerged from social media, adopting the codes of the yellow vests and supported only by certain unions.
The day is meant to bring together private and public sector employees and retirees, calling for jobs, wages, public services and industry. All the main workers’ organizations are mobilizing, including the supervisory staff union CFE-CGC, which was initially more reserved.
In the civil service, unions are counting on workers to “mobilize massively.”
At the SNCF national rail operator, the four representative unions, CGT, Unsa ferroviaire, Sud Rail and CFDT, have issued a joint call for a 24-hour strike. The Ministry of National Education expects around 17% of primary school teachers to strike, and private education unions have also called for strikes.
In the maritime sector, CGT dockworkers will strike in all French ports, while strike notices have been filed for air traffic controllers. In Paris public hospitals (AP-HP), FO and CGT have also called for a strike, as have several postal unions.
Dissatisfied with the government’s initial responses, high school and university students, who again organized protests and blockades this Tuesday, are expected to swell the marches. The coordination of the yellow vests, which has played a central role in organizing protests against the cost of living since October 17, has also called for participation in the strike and blockades.
Against a backdrop of inflation driven by the war in the Middle East, rising 3.4% year on year according to the national statistics institute Insee, the demands center mainly on wages. The CGT is calling for a 10% increase in the minimum wage (Smic), while the CFDT calls for a 100-euro net increase.
Unions are also angered by the freeze on the civil service index point and the maintenance of business aid in sectors whose minimum wages are below the Smic.
Other measures unions denounce in the draft budgets include the freezing of personalized housing aid (APL) and a waiting period before allocations are paid to non-European foreigners, according to Unsa deputy general secretary Dominique Corona. Railway unions describe the budget as “regressive,” saying it will worsen poverty, cut social security and freeze civil servant wages.
Authorities expect about 70,000 police officers and gendarmes to be mobilized. Transport disruptions are expected: SNCF forecasts that about nine in ten TGV trains will run, with Intercités and TER services more disrupted, and the RATP expects a train on two to run on RER lines B and C.
Solidaires has called for the strike to continue beyond Thursday, and the yellow vest coordination plans to continue protests from Friday, November 6, with a rally in Paris’s Place de la Concorde on Saturday, November 7.
