France - National strike over pension reform plans - June 26, 2010

The 24 June nationwide strike organised by five union organisations (CFDT, CGT, FSU, Solidaires and UNSA) mobilised hundreds of thousands of workers in protest at government plans to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 as well as to increase employees’ pension contributions. In particular in Marseille and Lyon participation in demonstrations surpassed that of earlier occasions. The unions argue that the changes will mean that as a result of the various breaks in their careers many women will have to work until the age of 65 to get a full pension. They point out that generally the reforms do not acknowledge the scale of the gender pension gap nor the need to take account of difficult and dangerous occupations (See also this Collective Bargaining Newsletter Year 3 May 2010).

English: http://seerpress.com/pension-reform-leads-to-union-strikes-in-france/1778/; 

http://www.epsu.org/cob/369

French: http://www.cgt.fr/spip.php?article37507

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.