Fires And Clashes With Police As French Protest Against Macron Erupts Again & Halts Fuel Shipments From Refineries

Posted on : 07/02/2023 By
Fires And Clashes With Police As French Protest Against Macron Erupts Again & Halts Fuel Shipments From Refineries
Global Economy Geopolitics Sovereign Info Network 

Police and protesters shot fireworks and tear gas at each other in the city of Rennes on Tuesday. Police fired tear gas at a group of “troublemakers” in the city of Rennes

A protest against government pension reforms turned violent in the French city of Rennes on Tuesday, as riot police used tear gas to dispel a group of around 200 demonstrators who had built barricades and pelted officers with fireworks. Tens of thousands of people also took part in strikes and protests across the country.

The strikes and marches were a repeat of last month’s protests, which saw around 1.2 million people take to the streets of France’s major cities, according to figures from the French Interior Ministry. The latest demonstrations come as the parliament debates President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed pension reform bill, which would see the retirement age hiked from 62 to 64.

In the northwestern city of Rennes, “around 200 individuals” refused to disperse after the end of a planned parade, and began facing off against police officers, city officials told TF1. City authorities urged the demonstrators to leave the scene and “dissociate themselves from the troublemakers,” but the group erected barricades which they then set on fire.

As protesters lobbed fireworks at police, the officers responded with tear gas. A water cannon was used on the crowd, TF1 reported.

Some 13 people were arrested and one police officer was injured, city officials said. Fires could be seen throughout the city after the gathering was finally dispersed, with smoke rising into the sky near St. Pierre’s Cathedral in the city center.

https://twitter.com/BreizhEoMaBro_/status/1622946072044634118?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Around 400,000 people marched in Paris, the left-wing CGT trade union said. However, the union reported similar turnout at a march last month, while the Interior Ministry put attendance at 80,000. The demonstration in Paris was described as “peaceful” and “festive” by French media, RT reports

French Strikes Halt Fuel Shipments From Refineries And A Fuel Depot, writes Oilprice.com

A nationwide strike in France over a proposed pension reform interrupted on Tuesday the shipment of fuels from refineries and a fuel depot of TotalEnergies, the French supermajor told Reuters.

Workers and employees in various sectors, including the energy sector, civil servants, and teachers, have been staging strikes for weeks to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age.  

Workers at the oil refineries at Donges and Feyzin, operated by TotalEnergies, are on strike today, a representative of the Force Ouvriere trade union told Reuters. Workers at the fuel depot Flandres have also joined the massive industrial action in France, the official added.  

This is not the first time that fuel deliveries have been disrupted by strikes this year. 

Two weeks ago, the strike in France halted wholesale fuel deliveries from three refineries operated by TotalEnergies on the first day of a series of planned nationwide strikes in many sectors. The Donges, Normandy, and Feyzin refineries of TotalEnergies stopped the wholesale supply of gasoline and diesel, while the refinery at Feyzin had to reduce processing rates to a minimum on January 19.

TotalEnergies and the French unit of ExxonMobil hold most of the refining capacity in France. The strikes against Macron’s unpopular pension reform are expected to continue.

The most recent wave of strikes comes three months after refinery workers went on strike for weeks in September and October amid a pay row. Strikes at refineries in France in the autumn of 2022 left more than 60% of the country’s refining capacity offline while gas stations in and around Paris and in the northern part of the country began to run out of fuel.

The strikes against the planned pension reform also come just as the EU banned imports of petroleum products from Russia as of February 5, Oilprice.com reports.

French Workers Erupt Again to Fight Macron’s Assault on Pensions, Kenny Stancil writes

For the third time in less than a month, hundreds of thousands of workers across France participated Tuesday in strikes and rallies to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular plan to force people to work longer before they qualify for a full pension.

The latest nationwide mobilization against Macron’s assault on French retirement benefits brought at least 750,000 people to the streets, with turnout lower than on January 19 and January 31. Tuesday’s walkouts and marches came one day after the National Assembly began debating legislation that would raise France’s official retirement age from 62 to 64 by 2030.

“Those of you who support this reform don’t understand how tough jobs are, what it’s like to wake up with an aching back,” Rachel Keke, the first cleaner in France to become a lawmaker, said during a tense debate in parliament on Monday.

“You don’t understand what it’s like to take medication to get through the work day. You don’t understand because it’s not a world you live in,” the leftist continued, garnering applause from fellow opposition lawmakers.

During a Tuesday rally in the city of Nice, pensioner Bernard Chevalier echoed Keke, saying that “we’re worn out by work.”

“Retirement should be a second life, not a waiting room for death,” he added.

Teachers cannot start working very early 2014 if they work for a total of 43 years, they will end up retiring at the age of 67, says one English teacher at the protests in #Paris on Tuesday. nn@lizakaminov spoke with the educator while at the demonstration 

Opposition to pushing back France’s retirement age is widespread, with recent polling showing that approximately three-fourths of the population is against such a move. Nevertheless, many of Macron’s allies remain determined to fulfill his campaign pledge to overhaul the nation’s pension system.

Last week, Macron characterized his effort to hike the retirement age as “essential,” while Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne claimed that doing so is “no longer negotiable.”

On Tuesday, Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt dismissed opposition lawmakers’ accusations that the government is in denial over the scale of protests and doubled down on the supposed need for change.

“The pension system is loss-making and if we care about the system, we must save it,” Dussopt told RMC radio.

But as Agence France-Presse reported, “some of the government’s own experts have said the pension system is in relatively good shape and would likely eventually return to a balanced budget even without reforms.”

Union leaders and left-wing lawmakers, meanwhile, “say the money can be found elsewhere, notably from the wealthy,” Reuters reported.

Organized labor, for its part, intends to launch repeated waves of mass demonstrations until Macron and others who insist on the need to cut retirement benefits are defeated.

“This reform will upend the lives of several generations,” Philippe Martinez, general secretary of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), said Tuesday at a march in Paris. “If the government stubbornly forges ahead, we will step up our protest with longer and harder actions.”

Striking workers in strategic sectors—including electricity production, transportation, and education—disrupted multiple aspects of daily life on Tuesday, though to a lesser degree than they did twice last month.

Macron’s bill faces an uphill battle in the National Assembly.

Notably, the New Ecological and Social People’s Union (NUPES)—a coalition of four left-wing parties recently formed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon—won 131 seats in last June’s parliamentary elections, denying Macron’s neoliberal alliance Ensemble the absolute majority it needed to ram through his unwanted austerity agenda.

However, journalist Marlon Ettinger, citing French Communist Party lawmaker André Chassaigne, warned recently that “the government might try to pass the reform through a social security financing bill (known as PLFRSS), which would allow for a series of constitutional delays that would significantly limit the amount of time deputies can discuss the bill. It would also block the possibility for the opposition to present their own counterproposals.”

In addition, “although Macron has no popular assent, nor a parliamentary majority for his reform, he does have constitutional tools he can use to push the package through,” Ettinger explained in Jacobin. “One, known as 49.3 (after the article of the Constitution which grants the president this power), essentially lets him bypass the National Assembly. The constitution of the current Fifth Republic grants the president these authoritarian powers to hedge against any popular sentiment that might make its way into the lower house. The use of 49.3 would suspend the debate in the National Assembly, then send the bill directly to the Senate, which is controlled by Les Républicains.”

Laurent Berger, general secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor (CFDT), told a Parisian crowd on Tuesday that concessions offered by the government, such as allowing people who start working early to retire early, “are just patches.”

“Increasing the legal retirement to 64 is the core of this reform and it is deeply unfair,” said Berger. “It is a democratic folly for the government to turn a deaf ear to the protest.”

Another day of action is planned for Saturday.

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