France - Massive and sustained mobilisation against pension changes - October 26, 2010

Public and private sector unions have managed to mobilise millions of people in protest against the government’s planned pension changes. An estimated 3.5 million joined the latest protests with demonstrations and strikes taking place across the country, with many university and school students joining the action. With the pension bill through the Senate and set to be signed into law the last week of October, on Monday 25 October CFDT union leader Francois Chereque and Laurence Parisot, head of the MEDEF employers’ group, said on television they were open to talks on youth and senior citizen employment (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 May, June, July-August and September 2010).

English: http://www.epsu.org/cob/384;

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE69O1DE20101026

French: http://www.cgt.fr/spip.php?article37842; 

http://www.force-ouvriere.fr/page_principal/semaine/index.asp?id=2076&2010/10/20/Retraites-L-epreuve-de-force-se-poursuit-sur-le-terrain

This article was published in the Collective Bargaining Newsletter. It aims to facilitate information exchange between trade unions and to support the work of ETUC's collective bargaining committee. For more information, please contact the editor Maarten van Klaveren, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) M.vanKlaveren@uva.nl. You may find further information on the ETUI atwww.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net. © ETUI aisbl, Brussels 2009.