The unions are getting up and running to keep up the pressure on the Executive and Parliament. Yesterday afternoon, the Prime Minister officially indicated that she opted for the third paragraph of Article 49 of the Constitution to approve the government’s pension reform. After a meeting at the CGT headquarters in Montreuil, the inter-union called for a ninth day of mobilization for Thursday, March 23 in response to this decision. Meanwhile, the union of the 8 union formations invites the French to “carry out calm and determined actions” and “calls for local union rallies this weekend”.
Already before this meeting, the general secretary of the CFDT Laurent Berger announced “new mobilizations” in response to 49.3: “Obviously there will be new mobilizations, because the protest is extremely strong, we already have many reactions from the union teams. “The mobilization and strikes must be amplified,” insisted his CGT counterpart Philippe Martinez. Confederal secretary Céline Verzeletti also spoke in this regard: “We must manage to create the conditions for a massive strike in as many professional sectors as possible ”. .
Two refineries close
The energy sector has been especially reactive since the CGT announced the closure from this weekend of the TotalEnergies refinery in Normandy, where employees are on strike but where shipments continue. “The employees have raised their voices” and “the main units will begin to stop starting tomorrow” so “normally the refinery will be stopped this weekend or Monday at the latest,” explained the CGT coordinator Eric Sellini , who also clarified that “deliveries are made sporadically” at Esso’s refinery in Fos-sur-Mer.
The La Mède and Donges refineries continue to strike and while shipments resumed at the Petroineos site in Lavera yesterday, Olivier Mateu indicated that the Bouches-du-Rhône refinery should close on Monday. “The movement is far from exhausted, on the contrary, the secretary of the CGT Departmental Union stressed this Friday morning. We will give free rein to the creativity of workers in their workplace and we will try to find them as much as possible .”
In Le Havre, the Compagnie Industrielle Maritime (CIM), which supplies fuel to the Normandy refinery (Total), the Gravenchon refinery (Exxon) as well as the Paris airports, is blocked from Thursday until Sunday morning, against pension reform and purchasing power, according to the CGT. For several days now, the oil unions had been proposing to the strikers at the refineries that they harden the movement by stopping production, but the latter were reluctant to start these technically delicate and lengthy operations.
Strike extended until Monday at Sud Rail
Several union leaders in the transport and energy sectors have warned of possible “excesses” or “individual actions” by rank-and-file workers. Transport is precisely the other sector that maintains a high level of mobilization against the pension reform. The Sud Rail railway workers union has also just voted to renew the strike until 11am Monday. “The challenge is to continue the mobilization and expand it”, expects Fabien Villedieu, representative of the Sud Rail union on the BFMTV microphone.
In the capital, the day began with an operation to block the northern ring road led this morning by the CGT Paris. “Since this morning, activists and employees mobilized against the pension reform have organized filtering barriers at the access points to the Paris ring road from the Portes d’Italie, Clignancourt and Montreuil,” the CGT said in a statement. At the same time, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced on RTL that the orderly searches of cleaning agents began to collect the waste that accumulates in the streets.
In a press release, the student union L’Alternative called on students to hold general assemblies on Friday “to block their places of study” and “approach the sectors on strike, to identify and block roads, stations, nearby ports and airports to support the workers”. Several union representatives want to maintain the protest for the great day of mobilization scheduled for next Thursday, such as the national secretary of the General Union of Engineers, Managers and Technicians of the CGT Fabienne Tatot on the set of BFMTV:
Source: BFM TV
