A transport strike immobilizes Paris | Day …

The public transport unions in Paris have gone on strike to oppose the pension reform that French President Emmanuel Macron wants to impose. In this way, the French capital was almost paralyzed by the very strict metro, bus and train measures. The lines of cars in revenue have reached almost 200 kilometers, in what has been the biggest fighting day of the last 12 years. Other unions will be mobilizing next week.

This strike is the first major mobilization against Macron's plan to put in place a "universal" pension system. Workers in the Paris metro, as well as employees of other professions who perform tasks deemed difficult or dangerous, would lose the benefits of their special diets, which now allows them to retire before other French.

The average age of retirement of public transport workers in 2017 was 55 years, compared to 63 for most French workers, said the entity that manages public transport in the French capital, the RATP. "This is not a privileged strike, it's a strike of employees who say" we want to retire at an age and under reasonable conditions, "he said at the radio. USAinformations General Secretary of the CGT, Philippe Martinez, one of the main French unions.

The reform of the pension system is a campaign promise of Macron, who promised to eliminate the 43 different special schemes and create a "universal" system through the use of points, in which "1 euro paid gives the same rights ". Faced with this potentially explosive project, the government wants to handle the situation calmly. From this month until the end of the year, a series of citizen consultations is open, in parallel with conversations with unions and employers, to discuss issues such as l retirement age, the duration of contributions and the transition between the present and the future. The next pension system, according to French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe.

Ten of the 16 Paris metro lines have been closed and the others saturated, buses run at low frequencies and traffic jams are enormous. The strike also affected suburban trains used daily by thousands of people living or working in the Paris suburbs. The lines leading to Charles de Gaulle airport, 20 km from the capital, only worked during peak hours. Travelers therefore had to look for other options to catch their planes.

To avoid chaos, many Parisians chose to work from home. Those who had no choice but to travel, tried using bicycles and electric skateboards. Taxi applications have been very popular, driving up prices drastically.