Suspension of pension reform: "a real victory" for the CFDT, the CGT wants a "blockade"

The CFDT intends to "participate in the conference on pensions and work which will reopen the subject of hardship and integrate the issue of financial balance" and which is due to open in the coming weeks.

The head of government's announcement "is the first blow to this highly contested reform since 2023," said France's leading trade union. It welcomes a "real victory for workers," which constitutes "a first response to the democratic wound" of its adoption without a parliamentary vote, thanks to Article 49.3 of the Constitution.

"The impacts are concrete and immediate for workers," notes the union, which believes that the suspension will already benefit generations born in 1964 and 1965. "For workers born after that, everything will depend on the 2027 elections," according to the CFDT.

"The measures in favor of women negotiated during the conclave are also important steps forward," the union rejoiced, while Sébastien Lecornu proposed that an "improvement" concerning women's pensions be included in the Social Security budget.

"Nevertheless, all these announcements will ultimately have to be adopted in the PLFSS (Social Security Financing Bill), warns the CFDT.

"This is a first step," said CGT union leader Sophie Binet on France Inter. But "the suspension the Prime Minister is talking about is only a delay in the implementation of the reform by a few months," she said.

"We therefore ask parliamentarians to clearly block the pension reform" at 62 years and nine months and 170 quarters and "not a delay in its application by a few months like today, which would put us at the mercy of any candidate in the presidential election with a reform that would continue to apply from 2027," she explained.

"For the CGT, the time is neither for points-based retirement (defended by the CFDT, editor's note), nor for capitalization," pointed out Sophie Binet, while the head of government indicated that these two subjects could be addressed during a pensions conference.

The CGT's participation in this conference will depend on "the agenda and the arrangements": "If it is to work on a points-based reform hypothesis, it will be without us," she warned.

For FO Secretary General Frédéric Souillot, the suspension of the pension reform is "a first step, but suspension is not repeal," according to a statement to AFP.

For the leader of the third union, "this reform imposed by 49.3 (without a vote in Parliament, editor's note) and rejected by the vast majority of employees, remains unfair, brutal and unjustified."