As French President Emmanuel Macron seeks to ram through pro-business labor reforms that would weaken the bargaining power of workers and make it easier for companies to fire employees, tens of thousands of workers and students took to the streets across France Tuesday to express their opposition to Macron’s agenda.
“We’re not expecting the 12th to be a tidal wave, we see it more as a starting point.”
—Stéphane Enjarlan, Solidaires
Led by the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), France’s second largest trade union, demonstrators flooded Paris and other major cities chanting: “Macron you’re screwed, the slackers are in the streets.”
The “slackers” label came from Macron himself, who in a recent speech vowed to not “give any ground [on his labor reforms], not to slackers, nor cynics, nor hardliners.”
Union leaders and France’s left opposition seized upon Macron’s comments and used them to rally workers ahead of Tuesday’s planned actions, which included around 180 protests and 4,000 strikes—the first nationwide demonstrations of Macron’s young presidency.
In an interview on Monday, former Socialist Party presidential candidate Benoit Hamon slammed Macron’s “slacker” remarks as “insulting” to French workers.
“Lazy people are the independently wealthy, who don’t need to work for a living,” Hamon retorted. “And a lot of independently wealthy picked Emmanuel Macron as their champion.”
Many have criticized Macron’s “fast-track” approach to passing the deeply unpopular reforms, which are expected to be finalized later this month. As the Guardian noted on Tuesday, the labor law changes are being “pushed through parliament with record speed using executive orders.”
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