The showdown continues. Opponents of the pension reform will again demonstrate everywhere in France, Tuesday, March 28, for a tenth day of action for which at least 150 rallies are planned. Surprised by the scale of the mobilization on Thursday – 1.09 million participants according to the Ministry of the Interior, more than 3 million according to the unions – the authorities are counting this time on a total of 650,000 to 900,000 demonstrators, including 70,000 to 100,000 in Paris.
In the capital, the procession will connect, in the afternoon, the place of the Republic to that of the Nation. Accused of violence by the demonstrators, the police are preparing to face “a much larger presence of young people”, according to a police source who predicts “a doubling or even a tripling” of their number compared to the previous mobilizations. The clashes during the last demonstrations, then the clashes around the Sainte-Soline basin during the weekend, attest to a deleterious climate, and raise fears of a high-risk day.
Gérald Darmanin intends to send 13,000 police officers and gendarmes to the field, including 5,500 in Paris, an “unprecedented security device”, underlined, during a press conference, the Minister of the Interior who called “solemnly on each and each in peace” and mentioned the possible presence in Paris of “more than 1,000 radical elements”.
The social movement is leaving with its usual lot of strikes and blockades. Inconveniences assumed by the unions, starting with the CGT, whose outgoing leader, Philippe Martinez, repeated on Monday that “the objective is the withdrawal” of the reform and that “there is no reason not to believe it”.
The circulation of trains, disrupted for three weeks, remains limited, with in particular three TGVs out of five, and one TER out of two. SNCF recommends that travelers who can cancel or postpone their trips scheduled for Tuesday. On the other hand, traffic will be “near-normal” for Eurostar and Thalys, according to a press release. SNCF Voyageurs expects the best on Wednesday, but warns that train traffic “will remain disrupted on certain lines”.
On the competition side, Trenitalia announces the removal of four out of ten trains, namely the round trips Paris-Lyon and Paris-Lyon-Milan at the end of the day.
Difficulties also in Parisian transport, with 40% of the RER removed on lines A and B, said the RATP on Monday. Traffic is also reduced on most metro lines, except on automated lines 1 and 14 and on 3bis, 7bis and 9. A number of stations, particularly along the route of the planned demonstration between the Republic and the Nation, will be closed.
However, bus and tram traffic will be normal.
Getting around by car is not necessarily easier, with 15% of service stations running out of at least one fuel, especially in the West and South – a consequence of the shutdown of five of the seven refineries in the country. The most affected department remains Loire-Atlantique (55.06% of stations with a shortage of at least one fuel).
At this stage, two of the seven refineries continue to produce in France, that of Esso-Exxon-Mobil in Fos-sur-Mer (Bouches-du-Rhône) and that of TotalEnergies in Feyzin (Rhône), which is running “in service at reduced flow”, according to the group’s management.
Two of the three Parisian waste incineration sites were still blocked on Monday, and 7,300 tonnes of garbage still littered the streets of Paris – against 8,000 on Sunday and 10,500 – on Friday, announced the City and the metropolitan union Syctom.
The private waste treatment company Derichebourg announced on Monday that the strike notice filed by the CGT a week ago had been lifted, making it possible to avoid a strike in the 10th and 18th arrondissements of the capital. In Paris, the daily collection of household waste is provided half by the management of the city of Paris and the other by private service providers.
In primary education, 30% of teachers will be on strike according to the FSU, the main union.
