“The great social mobilisation organised by all trade union organisations has been underway since 19 January. For two months, millions of workers, young people and pensioners have expressed, with strength and dignity, their rejection of a rise in the legal retirement age to 64 and an extension of the number of contribution periods.

This social movement demonstrated, through strikes in all professional sectors, still mobilised, and demonstrations in large and small towns across the country, that this pension reform was brutal, unfair and unjustified for the whole of the working world.

Today, it is this exemplary social movement that shows that the President of the Republic and his government have failed in the National Assembly. Instead of withdrawing their project, they have decided to pass it by force, by resorting to the 49-3.

The intersyndicale are gravely concerned about the responsibility of the executive in the social and political crisis that has resulted from this decision, a real denial of democracy.

With the support of the vast majority of the population, mobilised for weeks, the intersyndicale continues to demand the withdrawal of this reform, in complete independence, in calm and determined actions. It has decided to continue the mobilisation and is calling for local union rallies this weekend and a new big day of strikes and demonstrations on Thursday, 23 March.

16 March, press release by the intersyndicale: CFDT, CFE-CGC, CGT, CFTC, FO, FSU, Solidaires, Unsa, Fage, Fidl, MNL, Unef and VL”