The call for a strike on March 15 was launched to fight against the pension reform the day it will be discussed in a joint joint committee. Several sectors have promised to mobilize, what disruptions should we expect?
[Updated March 13, 2023 at 4:55 p.m.] The March 15 strike will be the eighth day of mobilization and the inter-union hopes that it will be followed. This date is not chosen at random, it corresponds to the day during which the joint joint committee will try to find a compromise on the pension reform before a new vote by Parliament on the much-criticized text. For the unions, demonstrating in the streets and disengaging in companies on March 15 is a way of making the rejection of the reform heard and opposing its adoption. Several calls have already been made for this new strike, encouraging the movement of this Wednesday to be one of the most important days of mobilization since the start of the protest. A will of the unions certainly inspired by the success of the previous strike, that of March 7 which pushed 1.28 million people to beat the pavement according to the police, 3.5 million according to the trade unions.
While the renewable strikes have been disrupting several sectors for a few days, the mobilizations and various actions will be reinforced with the strike of March 15. This is the case at the SNCF, which will see its traffic already slowed down for almost a week even more affected by the social movement, the same for garbage collectors. Other sectors which have not followed up on the renewable strikes also intend to take part in this Wednesday’s strike, like the RATP which has already delivered traffic forecasts for the day of March 15. All these promises of mobilization make the unions happy. “The parliamentary sequence is almost at its end”, it is therefore “essential to continue to maintain the pressure”, insisted in a press release the secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger. Social pressure that must last at least until March 26, the deadline for parliamentary debates on pension reform. Until then, what will be the scale of the eighth day of mobilization this Wednesday, March 15? Details of disruptions.
Affected by the renewable strikes, SNCF transport has been disrupted for several days and if some improvements are felt in the circulation of traffic, travel will again be complicated on Wednesday March 15. The traffic of TGV, Ouigo, TER and Intercités risks being “severely disrupted”, more than it has been since the mobilization of March 7. With BFMTV, Matthieu Bolle-Reddat, secretary general CGT Cheminots de Versailles, assured that the number of strikers should start to rise again and cause more disruption.
On the RATP side, transport will run at two speeds. The unions have announced that traffic will be normal on all metro lines but that it will be “very disrupted on the RER network” all day Wednesday. It will be necessary to deal with 3 trains out of 4 on average on RER A and 2 trains out of 3 for RER B, it should be noted that the interconnections at Nanterre Préfecture and Gare du Nord will be maintained. Finally, for buses and trams, no disruptions to expect.
The SUD education union called in a press release “all National Education and university staff to continue and amplify the mobilization” in order to put “France at a standstill”. As claimed by the first union which represents teachers, educational assistants, AESH and administrative education staff, National Education and university staff have “a role to play in this standoff since when the schools and colleges are closed, parents cannot go to work, similarly the closures of high schools or universities allow young people to mobilize and participate in blocking actions. The teachers’ unions were joined by the high school unions, including the UNEF, which called for demonstrations and strikes to “impose a defeat on the government”.
For the time being, fuel shipments have not resumed leaving the sites of TotalEnergies and Esso-ExxonMobil with the stated objective of holding out until Friday, March 10. The site of Clément Mortier, FO union official at TotalEnergies’ Mardyck depot has already announced the objective of blocking shipments until March 15, he told AFP. Also according to AFP, Wednesday March 8, 6.7% of the stations lacked fuel (diesel or gasoline) but the current blockades and strikes are not able to lead to fuel shortages, at least not in the short term. . The mobilizations would have to last several weeks before the resupply of the stations began to suffer from the strikes.
Whether it is inter-union or on the initiative of a single federation, refineries are continuing strikes and some are even talking about renewable strikes. The employees of the TotalEnergie sites are determined to continue the efforts and know that they still have a lever to harden the movement: stopping production in addition to fuel deliveries.
With already a week of uninterrupted strike, the garbage collectors plan to continue the movement at least until the strike of March 15th. In Paris, some streets are overwhelmed with uncollected trash cans and piles of rubbish. The situation is the same in other cities such as Nantes, Metz or Montpellier. Regardless of the discomfort of the residents, the garbage collectors are “very determined to continue the movement until the withdrawal of this bill”, informed on BFMTV Régis Vieceli, CGT general secretary of the waste and sanitation sector of the city of Paris. In addition to garbage collectors, waste incineration plants are also shut down, including three on the outskirts of Paris: in Ivry-sur-Seine, Issy-les-Moulineaux and Saint-Ouen.
If rail transport is very often affected by strikes, this is also the case for the air and port sectors. In airports, between 20 and 30% of flights were canceled during the previous strike and dockers organized blockades around port and industrial areas. No disruption has been officially announced with regard to aviation activity for the March 15 strike, however the national federation of ports and docks of the CGT has warned that “all workers” could support a “stop 72-hour shift” from March 14 to 16.
