Emmanuel Macron Faces New Nationwide Protests Against Pension Reform

(Bloomberg) -- French labor unions called for a new day of protests on Tuesday, seeking to force President Emmanuel Macron to either sweeten his pension-reform plan or abandon it.

After more than 800,000 protesters took to the streets across France on Thursday -- the biggest such turnout since Macron took office in May 2017 -- unions have been emboldened. They have extended their strikes into next week and called for new country-wide marches.

Unions opposing Macron's plan for a top-to-bottom rebuilding of the pension system are threatening to bring France to a standstill until the government backs down. Macron's Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, is expected to unveil the details of the pension reform sometime next week.

Workers in sectors including the Paris metro, national railways, nuclear plants, garbage collectors, schools, hospitals, air-traffic controllers, airlines walked off work on Thursday, with the transport strike to continue into Monday.

Macron's plan is to abolish a pension system with 42 different benefit regimes for different classes of workers and replace it with a universal points-based system. In the 21st century, he argues, workers don't have linear careers, as was assumed in 1945 when France's pension system was conceived. The multitude of regimes has become “corporatist,” leading to injustice, complexity and failures, the government says.

While Macron has already barreled through reforms of tax and labor laws, history shows pensions won't be nearly as easy. In 1995, Prime Minister Alain Juppe abandoned his pension-reform plan after strikes paralyzed the country for about a month.

French authorities are also preparing for demonstrations on Saturday, the day Yellow Vest protesters have since last year routinely organized marches against inequality, diminishing purchasing power and other social ills.

Since the Yellow Vest protests have sometimes turned violent, Macron's office is paying close attention to any potential security issues with all demonstrations, an official at the Elysee Palace told reporters in Paris on Thursday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net, Vidya Root

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