High school and university students, railway workers and postal workers marched together in Paris on Thursday to protest against reforms by French President Emmanuel Macron as well as against privatisation of public services.
SOT, Louis Boyard, president of UNL union (French): “Today, the feeling we have is: does the government have bad faith or is it an ignorant government? Today what we see is that Parcoursup [Macron’s reform for students] has not worked well, contrary to what the government says. We had professional baccalaureate classes, in suburban high schools, which are 100% of the workforce, waiting for the award of a university. This is the proof that Parcoursup has established a social scale. Maybe all high school students will have a [place] in university, but this will probably not be the case, but they will not already be in the faculty they want and especially we will have faculties for suburban high school students and faculties for the high schools of Paris. It’s social sorting. And even worse, we’ve been mobilising for months, asking the government to listen to us when we speak and it does not. The government does not listen to its youth, it is a deplorable situation. This is why we must mobilise and why we are here in protest, to say no to the selection [process].”
SOT, Laurent, Sud Trade Union (French): “I think we are at the beginning of something bigger. It’s not a comet tail. This movement continues globally since January in the country. The real country is resisting Macron. We see it everywhere and it affects all layers of society, be it workers, young people, retirees, we can not say that the street has been inactive in recent months.”