Railway workers gathered at Paris’s ‘Gare de Lyon’ railway station on Thursday (April 13), as France readied for another day of public protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to make people work longer for their pensions.
Hundreds of people then marched into the station’s hallway and onto the subway, chanting anti-pension reform chants.
Some trains will be canceled, and strike activities are likely among refinery workers, garbage collectors, and teachers, at a time when opinion surveys show that a large majority of voters still reject raising the retirement age by two years to 64.
A day before the Constitutional Council rules on the validity of the law that would raise the retirement age by two years to 64, trade unions called for a street protest.
If the Council gives its permission, possibly with some qualifiers, the administration will be entitled to publish the law, and will hope that this will finally put a stop to the protests, which have at times become violent and consolidated popular hatred against Macron.
On the 12th day of statewide protests since the strikes began in mid-January, demonstrators briefly blocked an entrance road to the Council with garbage cans, draping a banner across the street that read “Constitutional Censorship.”
The strike has slowed, and the protests have drawn smaller audiences in recent weeks, compared to the more than 1 million-strong throngs seen earlier in the movement.
