trade unions

“The pension system is not in danger, nothing justifies such a brutal reform,” Laurent Berger, the head of the  CFDT union.

As France returns from the Christmas break this week, the month-long strikes look set to get even more disruptiv.

Some 30,000 people, including many Yellow Vest protesters, demonstrated in Paris on Tuesday, according to the CGT union.

Unions are replenishing their financial resources to try and make industrial action last as long as possible as both SNCF and workers lose money.

French Labour Ministry will this week unveil outcome of months of talks with unions and bosses as part of a plan to reinvigorate the economy.

In 2012 the French post office La Poste agreed to set up a commission to find ways to reduce work-related stress, illness and suicides following its abrupt change of status from state-run enterprise to a limited company funded by the public purse. But today unions and workplace health experts say that many of the group's 260,000 staff are still suffering from the pace of change caused by endless reorganisation. As Rachida El Azzouzi reports, management are now in talks with unions in a bid to solve the problem.

Last week the French authorities banned a planned march in Paris by trade unions opposed to labour law reforms, before eventually backing down partially and allowing a more limited demonstration. Here Mediapart's editor-in-chief Edwy Plenel argues that demonstrating is a constitutional right and that, by banning the march that the trade unions wanted, the government violated the fundamental law that guarantees all our freedoms. It is, he writes, our duty to resist this unlawful act in order to defend our common ideal: democracy.