France’s government is open to more concessions on its plan to raise the retirement age by two years, said spokesman Olivier Veran, hinting at a bigger work-from-home push after labor unions threatened to bring the nation to “a halt.”
“We are in listening mode and the government changed its project various times already,” Veran said in an interview Sunday on France Inter in collaboration with France Televisions and Le Monde.
Beyond the debate on retirement age, “there’s the question of quality of life within the work place. This is fundamental. Our reform is a wider one and maybe this hasn’t been understood,” he said.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government is redoubling its efforts to secure a parliamentary majority as citizens increasingly take to the streets to protest a reform to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62. The number of protesters swelled to about 1 million on Saturday, with more demonstrations planned for Feb. 16 and March 7.
By focusing on the topic of work-from-home, Veran may be seeking to shift the focus to a less divisive subject while the debate on the controversial reform continues at the National Assembly.
“People want to work from home more than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic,” Veran said. “This is an excellent thing because as part of our climate transition plan, we will need, over time, 10 million French working from home twice a week. We aren’t there yet.”
In spite of differences in views on the retirement age, France’s government and labor unions are still working together to find ways to improve the quality of working life, Veran told France Inter on Sunday.
“We will have to work with companies to make sure they allow this in a way that people don’t end up being isolated at home,” he said.
Saturday’s marches were peaceful and many families joined in, Veran acknowledged. Still, he said that many people who took to the streets in smaller French cities showed the urgency of tackling the topic of work flexibility.
“I speak about distance from work premises, work from home organization and shorter work weeks precisely because it’s in smaller cities that people are further away from their work location,” Veran said. “What I picked up from protesters yesterday, beyond the question of age, is the need to work differently and better.”
It’s also in those smaller cities and towns that so-called Yellow Vests protests kicked off in 2018. What started as a grass-roots movement morphed into nationwide riots that hurt businesses and the economy, becoming a thorn in Macron’s side.
Veran’s work-from-home appeal also may be targeted at winning wider support among French women, who are among the biggest critics of Macron’s flagship pension reform. Many women are unhappy about the prospect of working longer or retiring with a lower pension.
As part of concessions to see the pension reform through, Veran also said the government will focus on measures that make it harder for big companies to fire large number of senior workers.
The breadth and dynamics of street protests in France have often proved make-or-break for past presidents’ reform efforts. In 1995, Jacques Chirac’s government dropped a pension overhaul plan after crippling strikes. Prolonged student-led protests forced a U-turn on labor laws in 2006, even after parliament had approved changes.
President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2010 pushed ahead with raising France’s retirement age to 62 from 60 despite months of upheaval. Macron now wants to lift it further, to 64, and has so far shown little sign he’ll back down.
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—With assistance from William Horobin and Samy Adghirni.
