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Radio France Internationale
Radio France Internationale
National
Alison Hird

Small French towns send out big message in rejecting pension reforms

Compiegne is a wealthy city with an imperial past, but a strong industrial one too. Blue collar workers from the local Colgate Palmolive and Saint Gobain plants were out protesting. © Hird/RFI

The recent protests and strikes making the headlines are in Paris and other big cities, but people in more than 200 towns in France took to the streets on Tuesday to oppose President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform. In Compiègne – an imperial town some 90kms north of the capital, a tenth of the population came out to say "no".

Around 4,000 people turned out in the freezing cold on Tuesday for the third day of protests and strike action against Macron’s proposed pension reform, which is currently being debated in parliament.

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