For weeks Emmanuel Macron has been accused, by enemies and some allies, of going missing in action
, say senior presidential aides and allies, Macron believes his government is winning. He may be right.The strikes, which began on December 5, have now outlasted the successful strikes which brought France to a standstill in 1995 . They have broken the modern French record for a rail strike set in 1986-87. On January 6, they will exceed the length of the general strikes in the great worker-student rebellion of May 1968.
The vast majority of strikers — 30,000 out of roughly 35,000 — are on the railways and the Paris Metro. Even on the state railways the proportion of strikers has fallen to 7.7 percent of staff . Something similar is happening on the Paris Metro and buses. This is nonsense — and hypocritical nonsense. The reform will not take effect fully for 18 years. The state system, when supposedly merged into one, will remain a state system. There will be scant opportunity for private pensions companies — and what opportunities there are won't be available until the 2040s.Whatever the CGT and others may say, there is a striking fact about the strikes. Most of those involved enjoy absurdly generous special deals under the present system.
Not good enough, say the militant unions. The whole reform is ultra-capitalist and un-French and must be abandoned. Union leaders need to defeat Macron to placate their even more militant grass roots, who are themselves divided between the revolutionary and the self-interested. This is heresy to the biggest, and moderate, union federation, the CFDT. Its objections are difficult to fathom. Theaverage retirement age in France is already over 63 and is expected to rise to 64 over the next eight years anyway.
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