STRIKE OF MARCH 28. A tenth day of mobilization against the pension reform is being prepared with the strike of March 28. Transport, schools, garbage collectors and refineries should mobilize. What disruptions are announced?
No respite for opponents of pension reform. The tenth day of strike against the bill scheduled for Tuesday, March 28 is approaching, only five days after the eventful mobilizations of last Thursday and after multiple local actions during the weekend. Taking advantage of the protest movement which has picked up the slack, with 1.08 to 3.5 million people taking to the streets last week according to the respective figures of the police and the unions, the strike of March 28 could be very followed. This will certainly be the case in transport with traffic announced “disturbed” by the directions of the SNCF and the RATP.
Elsewhere, such as schools or refineries, the calls have been made and if no response has yet been given, there are good reasons to expect disruption. The refineries are still under the influence of a renewable strike carried out for several weeks despite recent requisitions. Announcements made on the eve of the new strike day could set the tone for the extent of the disruption, but actions and demonstrations are planned for this Monday, March 27 as a taste.
The transport sector is entering the fourth week of a renewable strike and it promises to be mobilized for the tenth act of the social movement against pension reform, this Tuesday, March 28. Both companies have already announced several traffic disruptions. Travel will be “severely disrupted” with the SNCF, which has warned of the circulation of 4 TGV Inoui and Ouigo out of 5, 2 TER out of 3 and 2 Intercités out of 3 on average.
In Ile-de-France, the Régie de la RATP also warns of the difficulties to be expected: “disturbed” traffic on the metros and “very disturbed” in the RERs. Only trams and buses should be safe from traffic problems. Not only to share the first traffic forecasts, the RATP invites “travellers, who have the possibility, to favor teleworking or to postpone their trips on the network that day”.
If rail transport has been systematically mobilized during strike days since the beginning of the social movement against pension reform, other sectors tend to follow their example. In the air sector in particular, in which a strike by controllers is raging, the General Directorate of Civil Aviation could announce new cancellations of flights at several French airports this Tuesday, March 28, due to the appeal of the inter-union.
It has been three weeks since the garbage collectors started the strike against the pension reform and three weeks since the waste has been piling up in the capital. On the eve of the strike of March 28, the incineration plants in the Paris region reopened either by voluntary lifting of the movement or by requisition, but the agents of the waste treatment sector did not decide to put an end to mobilization. On the contrary, they should be more likely to disengage since public service agents will be added employees of the private company Derichebourg where a strike notice of indefinite duration has been filed by the CGT. Waste collection should therefore be disrupted in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 10th, and 18th arrondissements of Paris.
The strike movement continues in the oil sector and the March 28 strike is expected to be followed with blockades at refineries and fuel depots in France. These shutdowns of all or part of the production generate situations of lack of fuel. “15% of service stations are out of one or more products,” said the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, during an interview on RMC last Friday. But in places, especially in the Bouches-du-Rhône or Morbihan, more than 30% of the stations were out of one or more fuels this weekend. Indeed, “three regions are more in difficulty: Brittany, Pays de la Loire and PACA. The periphery of Occitania close to the sea, a little too”, specified the minister. If the State has made requisitions in certain places, in particular at the Fos-sur-Mer oil depot (Bouches-du-Rhône) and at the Gonfreville-l’Orcher refinery (Seine-Maritime), the walkouts continue in other places, and could still be effective on Tuesday.
In the education sector, few announcements were made about the March 28 strike. On Twitter, the CGT-Educ’action union nevertheless called for an “interprofessional mobilization on Tuesday, March 28” in order to “strike the iron while it is hot”. In a press release also published on Twitter this Friday, March 24, the high school student union, made up of the unions FIDL, the Voix high school student and the National High School Student Movement, also called for “renewable blockades from Monday March 27, and this, until ‘at the end of the week”. The high school students’ unions also claim that “1,500 establishments” have been blocked since the start of the protest movement against the pension reform. It goes without saying that the high school students’ unions will want to continue the blockade movement during the strike of March 28th.
