The mobilization against the pension reform continues Thursday, March 16, particularly in transport and the supply of gas and electricity, a day marked by the vote on Emmanuel Macron's disputed project.
The Senate adopted Thursday morning, before the last stage in the National Assembly, the compromise text on the pension reform which confirms the decline to 64 years of the retirement age.
The police intervened Thursday in Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne) to unblock a depot managed by Pizzorno Environnement, which collects garbage from the 15th arrondissement of Paris in particular and from 150 schools in the capital, a we learned from a police source. The deputies La France insoumise Mathilde Panot and Louis Boyard and the insoumise MEP Manon Aubry were on site in Vitry.
This intervention by the police follows a decision on Wednesday by the Créteil court, seized by Pizzorno Environnement. The company obtained from justice the assistance of the public force to release its deposit, it was explained to the police headquarters, recalling that it was not a requisition.
According to the Paris City Hall, 7,600 tonnes of waste cluttered the sidewalks of the capital on Wednesday morning. A heap that grows as the hours pass. The mayor, Anne Hidalgo, refused to requisition garbage collectors to limit the effects of their strike, leaving the ball in the government's court. Late Wednesday evening, the Paris police chief, Laurent Nunez, informed the mayor of Paris of his decision to requisition officers to remove the city's trash cans.
Traffic should improve at SNCF, but it will remain disrupted with 2 out of 3 TGVs and still difficulties in Ile-de-France, according to management.
The RATP expects normal traffic for the metros, buses and trams, but the service will remain disrupted on lines A and B of the RER.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGAC) has asked airlines to cancel 20% of their flights at Paris-Orly, as on Wednesday, due to a strike by air traffic controllers. "Despite these preventative measures, disruptions and delays are nonetheless to be expected," she added.
Most French refineries were still on strike on Thursday, this one being "renewed at TotalEnergies at the La Mède refinery, in Donges and on the Flanders depot", announced Eric Sellini, CGT coordinator for the group.
But the strikers are reluctant to shut down the sites completely, the stocks being almost full, because the operation is technically delicate and the restart process long. So much so that some fuel shipments have partially resumed in recent days at the Normandy refinery. Thursday, they "will undoubtedly be limited but will continue to be maintained", according to Mr. Sellini.
If the strike is very well attended in Donges and Flanders with respectively 80% and 100% of strikers on the morning shift, the mobilization sagged, on the other hand, at the Feyzin refinery, with "many strikers on the petrochemical side, but very few on the refining side," said the union representative, who "doubts their ability to maintain the stopped shipments."
The CGT-Energie on Wednesday issued an "ultimatum" to Storengy, a subsidiary of Engie, to implement a major and rare drop in pressure in the gas networks, otherwise the strikers will take care of it, which could deprive power plants and certain industrial customers of gas. The CGT subsequently explained that this request had been the subject of an end of inadmissibility from the management.
The staff of the eleven Storengy storage sites were to decide Thursday morning on the terms of the continuation of the movement. "Some of the group's sites are indeed experiencing operational disruptions, with no impact at this stage on security of supply," Engie announced on Wednesday evening.
Some 32,000 households in the Ardennes were affected Thursday morning by power cuts, the distributor Enedis said in a press release, an action against the pension reform project claimed by the CGT.
According to Enedis, the cities of Sedan, Rethel and Vouziers were targeted from 6 a.m. "At 11:35 a.m., all Ardennes customers were resupplied," according to the company. The CGT "claims the cut", specified Julien Lambert, federal secretary FNME-CGT. “This demonstrates today [Thursday] that employees are determined against this pension reform (…). Even if there are inconveniences in relation to the cuts, we have seen that people are in favor of mobilization. »
"Enedis strongly condemns any illegal act targeting the public electricity distribution network, which in no way reflects its public service values," said the company, which "systematically files a complaint in the event of an illegal act targeting infrastructure and equipment it operates".
"We will continue to put pressure on those who will have to vote for this law," said Fabrice Coudour, federal secretary of the CGT-Energie, in reference to the cuts targeting the political class. The Vendée home of the leader of the senators Les Républicains Bruno Retailleau was the subject of one of these targeted cuts on Wednesday.
The ports of Nantes-Saint-Nazaire, but also those of Brest and Le Havre, were stopped on Thursday as part of the "dead ports" day launched by the CGT to fight against the government's pension reform project, we learned from the prefectures and the CGT.
The strikers began setting up barricades on Wednesday evening to block the SFDM fuel depot in Donges, on part of the port, and this blockage was still in progress on Thursday morning. Tankers, which could not access this depot, which belongs to the State, were parked on the side.
At the port of Brest, around fifty strikers, port workers and dockers, were on site. Three containers, installed using carriers, blocked the access route to the port. "There is no entry or exit of goods in the port of Brest today," said Sébastien Léon, CGT port workers' union representative.
In Le Havre, access to port terminals had been blocked for 6 hours, by trucks, cranes, tire and pallet fires, according to the CGT federation of ports and docks (FNPD). No passenger pick-up or handling operation was planned by port agents and dockers until Friday morning at 6 a.m. Not a single oil tanker, not a container ship enters or leaves, the same for ferries and cruise ships.
