© Jean-Paul Pelissier / Reuters
Marseille protest
Public sector unions representing over 5 million French workers are going on a nationwide strike on Tuesday to protest President Emmanuel Macron's labor reforms.
Schools, hospitals and transport will be affected, with 30 percent of flights across the country canceled. It's the first time in a decade that all the major unions, representing almost 20 percent of French workers, have united behind a protest call, Le Figaro reported.
"This is very simple. We are rebelling against the laws that Macron has prepared," Didier Del Rey, spokesperson for CGT Paris Commerce, told RT.
"These laws go against workers, our rights we fought for and won by workers in the 1950s. Since then the government's done all it can to destroy what social protections there are in the labor code.
Del Rey said that the government favors businesses and "is against workers, from working conditions to salaries. You should know that in the commercial sector,
70 percent of employees earn the minimum wage, which is very tough. This is what we are unhappy about," he said.
He noted that Macron had called workers "slackers" and labelled it a provocation. "Slackers are the people who work hard to earn a living, to feed their family, to pay their debts, their mortgages. This is purely a provocation from the head of state and from the government, meaning that slackers wake up every day to go to their enterprises to work."
Tuesday's strikes promise to be "powerful," trade unions say, with
nearly 130 events planned to take place in 90 departments. Marches will take place in Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Toulouse, Nantes and dozens of other cities across France.
Comment: More than 4000 separate strikes and more than 200 rallies (so far) send a powerful message...including massive work interruption. How does that 'work' for you, Mr. Macronomics?