French unions are seeking to reignite resistance to President Emmanuel Macron’s higher retirement age with what may be a final surge of nationwide protests and scattered strikes. A third of flights were canceled at Paris’ Orly Airport on Tuesday because of strikes and about 10% of trains around France were disrupted. Macron’s move to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 without a parliamentary vote has triggered some of France’s biggest demonstrations in years. Macron says the pension reform was needed to finance the pension system as the population ages. Unions and left-wing opponents say the changes hurt poorer workers.
Raising the retirement age to 64 seems logical considering the ever longer life expectancy and the demographic reality a lot of countries face, so the level of protests against this has me a bit puzzled. Though I’ve understood that it’s mostly the way it was pushed through that has people riled up?
Hi from France :)
Well, I know it can be hard to understand from abroad, but the life expectancy is almost unrelevant here. And so are the benefits of working longer. Because the issue is mostly artificially created by cutting incomes. The government has been removing financial revenue from a well-functioning system, so that wealthy and ultra-wealthy people would contribute way less. This is the issue. You can’t cut income from the priviledged, then pretend the system is failing, and then report all the cost on people already struggling and exhausted. That’s the general sentiment here.
The messed up legal way of pushing this without letting representatives vote on it was just the spark.
economically logical perhaps, but that’s all. Nothing logical about more work in old age.
Yeah, fair.