French Railway’s Anti-Macron Strike Enters 29th Day, Becomes Longest Ever

PARIS (AP) – With 29 straight days of walkouts, French rail strikes against government plans to reform France’s retirement system marked a new milestone Thursday, surpassing even the lengths of strikes in the 1980s.

The nationwide walkouts against the government’s pension plans started Dec. 5. On Thursday, they surpassed a 1986-1987 rail strike in longevity, a walkout that lasted 28 days at the SNCF national rail company.

The current strikes have crippled train and metro services in Paris and across the country over the Christmas-New Year period and continue to cause severe disruptions.

The SNCF said half of its vaunted high-speed trains weren’t running on Thursday. Only two automated lines were running normally in the Paris Metro, with services spotty or non-existent across the rest of the network.

Unions are gearing up for further walkouts next week, when French schools reopen and negotiations are set to resume with the government.

In a televised New Year address on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed his commitment to the pension overhaul but urged his government to “find the path of a quick compromise” with unions.

Macron stayed firm on the principles of the reform, including its most decried measure: raising the eligibility age for full pensions from 62 to 64. He insisted the new system will be fairer to all French workers and will be financially sustainable. The plan aims to unite dozens of separate pension systems into one and eliminate special deals that let some French transit workers retire in their 50s.

Commuters try to get on a bus of line 91 outside Gare Montparnasse train station in Paris on January 2, 2020 on the 29th day of a nationwide multi-sector strike against the government’s pensions overhaul. – The leader of France’s hardline CGT union on January 1, 2020 urged all workers to join pension strikes that have crippled public transport over the past month, as a showdown with French President Macron enters a second month. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images)