French Retirement Age: What Are The Protestors’ Demands?
Alongside hundreds of thousands of French people, Isabelle Dumond recently participated in a demonstration against pension reforms, a first for her.
When interviewed, she said "I work in an office. I don't have to carry bricks all day. But I'm mentally exhausted by the pace, the productivity that's demanded of us".
After years of being pressured to work harder, she has joined many other French citizens in the fight for a better work-life balance, with a protest on January 31st bringing together 1.27 million demonstrators across the country.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for pension reform entails raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. According to the Labour Ministry, the proposed reform could generate €17.7 billion. Macron believes that this will prevent the collapse of the state pension system and will ensure that younger generations do not bear the burden of financing older ones.
Left-wing opposition have suggested an alternative to pension reform: increase taxes for the wealthy and corporations. Oxfam calculated that all it would take is a 2% tax on France’s billionaires to close the funding gap, a €12bn annual pension deficit expected by 2027. In particular, the public have found an enemy in Bernard Arnault, owner of French luxury group LVMH and the world’s richest man. At marches, protestors are carrying signs with his face on a wanted poster. The images of CEOs of prominent companies such as Bouygues, Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole, have similarly been the subject of these posters.
“The billionaires have only gotten richer since the Covid-19 pandemic, Macron refuses to tax windfall profits made by our biggest companies, and somehow all the effort to fix the pensions problem must fall on the shoulders of workers? This is a moment to fight for the kind of society we want — not one where capital crushes labour and people are just consumers.”
This statement was made by François Ruffin, MP for the Somme region and prominent figure in leftwing Nupes alliance.
It comes as a series of criticisms made about Macron since his 2017 election, which saw him gain the nickname “president of the rich” by opponents. His government has cut taxes paid by companies, reduced unemployment benefits and scrapped a wealth tax. As a result, the pension reform has now been perceived as an extension of policies that favour the wealthy and businesses over working people. Government officials make the counter-argument that Macron’s economic agenda has brought prosperity to France, pointing to declining unemployment and strong foreign direct investment figures.
However, after a 35-hour work week lasting over two decades, which has placed France's productivity rates higher than most of its European counterparts, the French are showing shifting attitudes towards the role of work in society. By reducing working hours, companies were forced to demand more from employees to remain competitive, cutting their break times. As a result, productivity in France rose by 18% per working hour in 2019, compared to 16.8% in Britain over the same period.
Growing demands for productivity have culminated in the malaise felt by the French people. In 2018, the Eurofound European Working Conditions Survey found that France was one of two Western European countries with a "high" rate of burnout, measured at above 3.25 on a scale of 1-5.
"The pandemic has forced the most privileged classes … to re-think their relationship to work, something the working class had done a long time ago," said Jeremie Peltier of the Jean Jaures Foundation think-tank.
The discomfort of so many French citizens with the workplace is why the protests against pension reform are evolving into a broader movement. Undoubtedly, it will be a struggle for Macron’s administration to find a solution that satisfies all parties involved.
The administration hopes lower unemployment and relaxed labour laws will increase labour mobility and reduce the number of people who remain in jobs they dislike out of fear of being unemployed. After years of chronically high unemployment rates, significantly greater than those in Germany and Britain, France is beginning to make progress.
Yet, for most, following years of intense work to meet growing productivity demands, the pension reforms are a breaking point.
As Isabelle Dumond puts it, “For me, the reform would mean working an extra year and a half, but I can’t take it anymore.”
