French Unions Vow "Tsunami" Of Protests On May Day

By enacting a pension reform that will see the retirement age raised to 64 by 2030 after it was approved by the Constitutional Council on April 14, French President Emmanuel Macron once again irked the leaders of workers' organizations, Bernard Bissuel reported for the French newspaper Le Monde.

Photo Insert: The law raising the retirement age has drawn the ire of the masses.

Macron's choice was predictable but it was carried out in such a short time that workers’ representatives regarded it as another brutal act against the unions.

In a statement, union leaders had pressed Macron not to sign the reform into law: It is the "only way to calm the anger that is expressed in the country."

They were in for a painful awakening on Saturday when they discovered that the bill had been officially translated into French legislation overnight by appearing in the Journal Officiel.

"Emmanuel Macron's message (...) is, to the very end, contempt for the world of work and disconnection with reality," Laurent Berger, the head of the moderate CFDT union, told daily Le Parisien on Sunday.

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