One protest movement started a year ago in France and drew hundreds of thousands at its peak to roundabouts across the country in angry “Yellow Vest” demonstrations against planned increases in gas taxes, reports The New York Times.
Another — a nationwide strike expressing fury over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to overhaul the pension system — began this past week. On Saturday, it continued to paralyze parts of the country.
Even as the strength of the long-running Yellow Vest protests has dissipated over the year, the movement’s simmering anger at the president has run smack dab this weekend into the latest turmoil over his pension plans.
Both events have harnessed broader discontent with the policies of Mr. Macron, who is viewed both by both Yellow Vests and labor activists as arrogant and disconnected from their daily struggles. At their most violent, the Yellow Vest protests saw people break shop windows, the police fire tear gas and rubber bullets and Mr. Macron consider a state of emergency.
More Yellow Vest rallies were expected in Paris and other cities on Saturday, and so were traditional union demonstrations against unemployment. But the size and impact of both are uncertain. And though neither is directly tied to the pension demonstrations, both could get a boost from the latest social unrest.
On Saturday, about a thousand Yellow Vest protesters marched from the Economy Ministry to southern Paris. The demonstration was mostly calm, despite brief scuffles with the police, who fired tear gas. A separate union protest gathered in the Montparnasse neighborhood, while labor activists also demonstrated in cities like Marseille and Caen.
There is little sign of any coordination among any of those causes: The Yellow Vests — named for the fluorescent emergency gear that all French drivers must have in their vehicles — are largely leaderless and the union rallies are held annually on the first Saturday of December.
But the pension fight has given new energy to both movements, and some Yellow Vests took part in this past week’s labor marches, a stark contrast to last year, when they rejected unions as inefficient and archaic.
And the government was gearing up for more protests in the coming week. Labor unions have called for huge street demonstrations on Tuesday, the day before Prime Minister Édouard Philippe is expected to unveil fresh details of the pension plans.
Mr. Macron has promised to standardize 42 public and private pension schemes into one state-managed, point-based plan. But for many protesters, nothing less than the future of their vaunted social safety net is at stake. Many fear losing money and having to work longer before retiring.
The protests have already unleashed days of public transportation chaos that halted trains and led to cancelled flights.
On Saturday, the impact of the continuing strike was limited, since weekday workers did not have to commute. But train traffic was still heavily disrupted across France, and some businesses have started expressing worries that the strike could affect Christmas shopping.