PARIS, Sept. 24 (Xinhua) -- French rail workers on Tuesday decided to stop working and take to the streets across the country to pressure President Emmanuel Macron to reconsider his pension system reform.
Joined by unions Solidaires and FSU, CGT, the main union at the state-run railway company SNCF issued a strike call and invited discontent people to join 150 demonstrations in French cities "to stop the social regression" and defend preferential terms of transport workers, which include retirement on full pension at 52, a decade earlier than other French workers.
In Ile-de-France region, two out of five scheduled inter-city links are running on Tuesday, along with three in five regional trains. Meanwhile, high-speed TGV and international services maintain normal schedule, according to the SNCF.
Tuesday's social action is the third such movement this month, against the government's plan to overhaul the country's pension regime.
In one of his major campaign promises in 2017, Macron wants to merge the multiple existing pension systems into a single points-based scheme which proposed same rules for calculating pensions for all, regardless of profession or sector.
Workers will still be able to retire at 62, but they will only draw a full pension without any discounts if they work two years longer.
"Everyone is concerned by this reform and the challenge is to maintain a system of solidarity...in order to avoid that one works longer and get less when he is retired," Philippe Martinez, CGT chief, told France Culture radio.
For decades, governments of the left and right have tried to overhaul France's pension system, but have always abandoned their reform bids in the face of street protests.
In 1995, SNCF unions staged three weeks of strikes that paralyzed the country and forced then prime minister Alain Juppe to resign after he dropped a retirement reform plan and a welfare cutbacks pragram.
In a further sign that the gloom in the Elysee is not over, RATP, which run local trains, buses and the metro in the Paris region, and Sud rail, the third main union in SNCF railway company, pledged to stage rolling strikes from Dec. 5, a move likely to plunge the world's top tourist destination into chaos during Christmas festivities.
"We call all union confederations, all the components of the social movement, and not only the pensioners to join us and to mark a halt to this government that breaks everything," said Fabien Dumas, federal secretary of Sud Rail union.
"Without creating a balance of power, we do not get anything. Talk is not good for anything," he told BFMTV news channel.
