Strike on January 19: how unions are organized for this first day of mobilization

An arms vigil ahead of a first day of action that promises to be very crowded. This Tuesday night in the Old Port of Marseille, 500 people gathered for a descent of torches at the call of the CGT, in advance of the various actions planned by the various unions for the coming days.

“It’s a warm-up lap”, “a first warm-up, on Thursday it will be specifically for another content”, two of the participants in this march explained to BFMTV.

“We have to start now”

Because for this Thursday, which promises to be dark in many sectors, the different unions are putting themselves in order of battle for an effective mobilization and followed by the greatest number. In Paris, Philippe, a member of the CGT, for example, spent several hours handing out leaflets at the exit of a metro entrance.

The same story inside the Stellantis company, a car manufacturer that has already seen its employees go on strike in recent months to demand wage increases. There, the strike plan is quasi-military and organized to the millimeter.

“We must establish a battle plan for Thursday and we must also have a militant presence in the workshops to surround the processions of strikers that are going to be very important,” Cédric Brun, general secretary of the CGT, indicated during a meeting filmed by BFMTV. PSA.

And after Thursday?

And the unions want to go even further. While intelligence expects up to 750,000 protesters across the country for this Thursday, including between 50 and 80,000 people in Paris alone among the 221 actions scheduled across the territory, the goal is to equal the strikes of 1995. That year, 2 million per people lashed out at the “Juppe plan” and forced the government to back down.

In addition, trade unionists also seem motivated to organize “intermediate actions” between days of action. Cutting power to elected officials in favor of pension reform is a controversial hypothesis.

“We are already preparing the rest, what’s more, we know that the unions will have to meet the night of the mobilization to prepare the next ones and we will also have to determine the intermediate actions, between these days of struggle.” , concludes Cédric Brun, who already has a long-term conflict in mind.