Live | Marseille: a torchlight descent as a “warm-up” of the fight against pension reform
About 300 people answered the call of the CGT, this evening in front of the Reforms, for a torchlight descent on the Canebière. A festive event that looks like a warm-up round before the big event, Thursday at 10:30 a.m. “The evening demonstration had been decided before the national meeting of the inter-union. It’s a warm-up that brings the troops together and that makes it possible to demonstrate that there is no resignation despite the little music that we hear on the government side, confides Olivier Mateu, secretary general of the union. CGT 13. We know that this movement will be long term but we won’t give up on anything. Departure age, contribution period, recognition of hardship… it is this unfair reform as a whole, driven solely by the effort of workers, that we are going to fight !”
With the sound system blaring and torches brandished, the crowd, where union representatives, workers, students, unemployed and retirees mix, headed for the Old Port, aware of the task to be accomplished to make the government back down. “I’m here for me and my children, explains Malik who marches with his two daughters and his little boy. We don’t want to die at work and we’re here to defend a system of solidarity for ideological questions… We’re not going to let it go.“
The 30-year-old bank employee will parade again on Thursday. Like the rest of the evening crowd, which dissipated around 7:30 p.m. under the shadehouse.