A halftime mobilization day for purchasing power

Between 100,000 and 300,000 people demonstrated on Tuesday in France to request an increase in wages and defend the right to strike. A relative participation which suggests that in this stage, the generalization of struggles has not started.

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Neither spectacular extension nor demobilization. The day of interprofessional action, which took place, Tuesday, October 18, to defend purchasing power and the right to strike, ended in a report relatively close to the previous one, September 29.

As always for this type of event, the costing of participants is a pretext for a battle between state services and unions. The Ministry of the Interior estimates that 107,000 people have paraded in the street throughout the territory (13,000 in Paris); Or a performance slightly lower than that recorded three weeks ago. The CGT, it brandishes, without surprise, much more flattering orders of magnitude: 300,000 women and men gathered on Tuesday “everywhere in France”, including 70,000 in the capital, according to the confederal management.

Even if, in absolute value, these data is controversial, they suggest that the generalization of struggles has not started, at this stage. Which is not entirely surprising, given the improvisation that has prevailed. The appeal to demonstrations had, in fact, was launched only five days earlier, by four employee unions (CGT, FO, FSU, Solidaires) and by four organizations representing the youth (Fidl, MNL, UNF, Lycian voice). An initiative taken in the wake of the requisitions of Totalnergies employees, who had ceased work to obtain increases in their remuneration.

Philippe Martinez, the secretary general of the CGT, at the head of the procession during the day of interprofessional action to defend the purchasing power And the right to strike, in Paris, October 18, 2022. Agnes Dherbeys/Myop for “Le Monde” “Building a movement like that, quickly, it’s never simple” , explains Benoît Teste, the secretary general of the FSU, addressing journalists in the “headboard” of the Parisian procession. The rate of strikers with national education “is not extraordinary” but it “is not so bad,” he adds. The vocational high schools constitute a separate case: in these establishments, the teachers were very numerous to pose the pen in order to denounce a reform project synonymous – in their eyes – of submission to the immediate needs of the bosses.

Austerity on a very large scale

“We find that there are never enough people but that does nothing, we are there anyway”, slides in a laugh Christine, 56, employed in the city’s town planning management from Paris. Like many people who beat the pavement between the places in Italy and Vauban, she came to protest about her pay sheet, abused by years of closing point blocking. “It is important that there is a general revaluation of purchasing power in France,” she continues. It has to move. We feel that it is quite explosive and that it takes very little for that It goes far beyond what we see today. “

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