国际英语资讯:French govt seeks way to end social crisis as unions harden action against pension reform_时事

国际英语资讯:French govt seeks way to end social crisis as unions harden action against pension reform

The reform consisted in merging the variety of 42 different pension set-ups for different professions into a universal regime.

The proposed single system would use points so that each euro paid in would give the same retirement benefits no matter what sector pensioners worked in.

That meant to scrap the special transport worker status, which allows workers to retire on full pension at 52, a decade before other French employees.

Locking horns with unions over pension system had put previous French governments on the hot seat.

In 1995, unions of workers from the state-owned national railway company SNCF staged three weeks of strikes that paralyzed the country and forced then Prime Minister Alain Juppe to drop a retirement reform plan and a program of welfare cutbacks and resign.

"They have to pull the reform," Philippe Martinez, head of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), told France Info radio.

The leader of France's largest union in the public sector warned that "things are changing fast and the anger is huge ...The government should be attentive," he said.

Critics say the reform would effectively force people to work longer, in particular public sector workers who have been allowed to often retire earlier due to hard working conditions. The government argued that it is needed to bring the costly pension system into balance.

On Monday, train traffic and metro networks were heavily disrupted for the fifth successive day. SNCF said up to 15 percent of the trains were operational, spelling traffic chaos for millions of commuters.