Railway workers gathered at ‘Gare de Lyon’ Paris train station on Thursday (April 13) as France braced for a further day of street protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to make people work longer for their pension.
Hundreds of them then marched into the station’s hallway and took the subway, while chanting anti-pension reform slogans.
Some trains will be cancelled, and strike actions can also be expected among refinery workers, garbage collectors and teachers, at a time when opinion polls show a wide majority of voters still oppose pushing retirement age by two years to 64.
Trade unions urged a show of force on the streets a day before the Constitutional Council’s ruling on the legality of the bill that would raise the retirement age by two years to 64.
If the Council gives its approval, possibly with some caveats, the government will be entitled to promulgate the law, and will hope this will eventually put an end to protests, which have at times turned violent, and coalesced widespread anger against Macron.
In a 12th day of nationwide protests since strikes began in mid-January, demonstrators briefly blocked an access road to the Council with rubbish bins, hanging a banner across the street reading “Constitutional Censorship”.
The industrial action has lost some steam and the protests have rallied thinner crowds in past weeks compared with the more-than 1 million-strong numbers seen earlier in the movement.
