On Tuesday, the government rejected the request for mediation made by the head of the CFDT Laurent Berger, provoking the outraged reaction of the union leader and differences within the majority.
Opposed to the pension reform, Laurent Berger called on the executive on Tuesday to set up “mediation” to “find a way out” of the social crisis, a request which will be the subject of a letter from the union to the President of the Republic.
“We take Laurent Berger’s proposal to talk to each other, but directly. No need for mediation”, assured government spokesman Olivier Véran during the report of the Council of Ministers, as the 10th day of action began. against this text at the call of all the united unions.
Present at the start of the Paris demonstration, the union leader reacted strongly to this refusal from the government.
“It’s going to start to suffice the dismissals for discussion and dialogue (?) It’s unbearable that the answer is a dismissal,” he said. The government’s response is “an arm of honor”, also estimated the First Secretary of the PS Oliver Faure.
But the deputies of the Modem, one of the components of the majority with Renaissance and Horizons, have also distanced themselves from the position of the government.
“It’s good to have one or two people to try to find the dialogue and have a certain distance”, underlined the president of the centrist group Jean-Paul Mattei, during a press point at the National Assembly.
“A mediator does not interfere in the background, he is there to find the binder and manage to talk to each other, that’s what is important. You need someone who is not involved” directly in the reform, said insisted this close friend of François Bayrou.
On France Inter on Tuesday morning, Laurent Berger proposed to “take a month, a month and a half, to ask one, two, three people to mediate”, and he called for a “gesture of appeasement to find a way out”.
But “if we go on a break of a month and a half and a mediation, in the end we do not pass the reform”, assured a government source to AFP.
“The President of the Republic has said it: he is ready to receive the inter-union since, because we respect our institutions, that the Constitutional Council will have pronounced on the conformity of our text of law”, detailed Mr. Véran, or not before the end of April.
“Then, the Prime Minister is at the disposal of the unions to receive them very directly, to be able to talk,” he added.
The government spokesman also recalled the other possible topics for discussion with the unions “to advance workers’ rights”: “distribution of value within the company”, “ends of career”, “the low wages below the minimum wage”.
fff-lum-adc-el/hr/sp
03/28/2023 14:43:50 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP