“Without pensions there are no Olympics”, sang this Tuesday the group of workers who occupied the headquarters of the Organizing Committee of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games within the national day of protests called today against Macron’s pension reform.
Initiated by activists from the CGT RATP (urban transport) union, this action brought together workers from different sectors, including railway workers and workers from the Monoprix chain of stores.
“It is a symbolic action, to show ourselves and make noise,” explains Yassine, a bus driver and member of the CGT RATP. “Our message was to say ‘if there are no pensions, there are no Olympic Games’, so as long as the government doesn’t give back in their reform, we will continue to mobilize and make life more complicated for them”.
LIVE – “No retirement, no Olympics”: the CGT occupies the headquarters of the Paris 2024 Olympics https://t.co/tJT8pZGP1a
— Clement Lanot (@ClementLanot) June 6, 2023
The sudden invasion and occupation of some significant buildings has been a strategy of French workers and activists in some previous protests against the pension reform, such as on April 20, when they did so at the headquarters of Euronext, the company that manages the Paris Stock Exchange, in the financial district of La Defense, and also a week later at the headquarters of the Louis Vuitton emporium and the Black Rock vulture fund.
Meanwhile, the protesters mobilized this Tuesday in approximately 250 calls that were throughout the country. The Government, for its part, intended to respond with repression, as it has already been doing in recent days of protests and has deployed some 11,000 police officers, 4,000 of them in Paris.
[DIRECT] People in Toulouse for the #manif6juin. Demonstrations are underway in Le Havre, Rouen, Montpellier… Follow the mobilization day with us.
We must take stock of the past few months and prepare for the future, by demanding a real battle plan against Macron! pic.twitter.com/MN00eSpbN6— Permanent Revolution (@RevPermanente) June 6, 2023
The determination of the workers who maintain various protests, periodically carry out pot-banging against government officials wherever they want to carry out an act and at the same time that the struggles for wages multiply, contrasts with the policy of the Intersindical (which brings together the main unions of the country) and that it has been betting for a long time to get the demonstrations off the streets to take them to the siding of a dialogue table with the Government or wait for it to be resolved through Parliament. As already demonstrated, the dialogue table was a mere humiliation for the unions, where the Government was not willing to deliver anything, and the parliamentary path was already blocked by Macron and his prime minister by applying a new and undemocratic constitutional article to stop a proposal that sought to eliminate the increase in the retirement age and was going to be discussed on June 8.
The day of this Tuesday, shows that there is a predisposition to continue the fight and that the place to face the pension reform and conquer the demands for salary increases, among others, continue to be the streets and the strike.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
