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About 200 demonstrations were organized this Tuesday across France on behalf of unions and left-wing groups. The protesters ask the Government of Emmanuel Macron to further increase the minimum wage, to recalculate the unemployment insurance reform and some pending on pensions.
Low wages, high prices. Thousands of people came out to demonstrate this Tuesday in many cities and towns in France. The participants consider that life in large cities is increasingly expensive, in addition, there is an urgency to classify the professional branches to increase the minimum wage, the wage emergency in the public service and many other reasons the unions have to demand changes to the Government of Emmanuel Macron.
This Tuesday protests were registered in Rennes, Nantes, Caen, Marseille, among other cities. In Paris, the capital, around 25,000 people took part in the march. According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, some 85,000 people demonstrated throughout France, however, figures from the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) assure that there were about 160,000 participants.
Along with the CGT, members of other unions marched: FO, Solidaires, FSU, as well as the youth organizations Fidl, MNL, Unef and UNL. All protested in defense of wages, employment, pensions and against the reform of unemployment insurance. Even another of the slogans of the marches was the sanitary pass and the mandatory vaccination that, according to the trade unionists, violates the freedoms of the workers.
«More than 160,000 salaries, actifs comme portraits, ont squeezed, avec près de 200 rassemblements, partout en France, leur mécontentement face aux choix économiques et sociaux gouvernementaux dictés par le patronat…»https://t.co/LkrQqXekV7
– The CGT (@lacgtcommunique) October 5, 2021
Increase in the minimum wage due to the increase in the cost of living
A few months before the presidential elections in France, the tension is already beginning to be felt in the French political environment.
In the midst of this, the unions and left-wing groups took to the streets again to make visible different problems and economic concerns in order to obtain “urgent responses” from the Government.
One of the most recent reforms and one that many protested is that of unemployment insurance, which will no longer calculate financial aid by dividing the gross wages received in the last 12 months, but during the last 24 months. This translates into a reduction in benefits for people who receive unemployment benefits.
Another argument of the protesters is the weak increase in the minimum growth wage or ‘Smic’ (in French) which is the legal minimum wage.
GENERAL STRIKE!
👉Today there is the ELEVENTH general strike against the pension reform
👉The main labor and student unions conveneIt is also claimed:
👉Rise of wages
👉Preservation of jobs in industry pic.twitter.com/54ooNWLatP– InterPRAVDA 📢 ES (@interpravdaES) October 5, 2021
On October 1, Smic increased by 2.2%. So it went from 1,554.58 euros to 1,589.47 euros, an increase of 34.89 euros. However, the protesters are demanding a minimum wage of 1,700 euros.
On the question of wages, “the price rises that have accentuated the pressure on purchasing power show how central this is,” Yves Veyrier, general secretary of Force Ouvrière, told the Ouest France newspaper.
Veyrier also called for “an urgent revaluation of all trades attached to the minimum wage and addressed his message” both to those who govern us and to those who aspire to govern us tomorrow.
With AFP and local media
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