The good reason to have retired people around and a reason why to protest for the French pension reform

Our society focuses mostly on the workforce and the work done against wages. But in the world there is also a lot of work to be done, which would be too expensive if one had to pay for it.

For many there’s nothing in life but work. Badly enough we find now a generation which seems just to live to work and to gain money. And the pay they receive for the work they do is often not enough to come around. Yesterday, on May the first, it was Labour Day, a day for marches in many countries. In many speeches was looked at the payment for work and how labourers are squeezed out like a lemon.

In one of my speeches for 1 May, I indicated that work should not be something reprehensible or something we should abhor. Work can be something useful and enjoyable. But the enjoyment of work should not be undermined by those who want to earn as much as possible on the hood of others. And therein lies the major problem of our society. In fact, it seems we are evolving back to the days of Adolf Daens, or rather going backwards.

The Flemish priest from Aalst with his brother Pieter Daens dared to go against the rich higher class and the Catholic Church who joined hands with those rich people who used children, their parents and grandparents to work for them at a starvation wage, until they dropped to death.

In several countries, the governors think because people are getting older, that we can change the retirement age so that the population can work longer for the rich again until they fall to death.

Some people and a lot of politicians are of the opinion that retiring means that one can no longer contribute anything to society and becomes an unnecessary burden to be borne, better lost than rich. They forget that retirement doesn’t mean disengagement. There are an enormous number of retirees in France, Belgium and Holland who volunteer or who are part of clubs. Those pensioners contribute immensely to society by taking on all kinds of jobs that no one else wants to or can do, because they are often also unaffordable.

It would be wrong to think that the French do not like to work. They have good reason to request a quality of life and to have time to work and live properly. French people simply think that

“after (they) have worked or have delivered an adequate performance at work, they have the right to a vacation worthy of the name … I have given, so now, I have the right to retire.

which is a justifiable idea. They have given a lot of their time in life to society, and after having worked for so many years they find it is time that they should be able to take it easier, not having to mean to stop totally with work, but just to do only that work that they love to do and what they find worthwhile to invest their time in it.

Volunteering is a work unit that is far too much is misunderstood. It is forgotten which a gap of volunteers do fill with tasks that would otherwise cost society a lot of money, but which they do not want to put in now, and that is why those many volunteers of age should be admitted.

During work life, one has often had to abandon what one has lost heart to. When you reach retirement age, you can finally devote yourself fully to what you are passionate about without getting paid for it.

The reforms in France now also remove the special advantages that many workers had, allowing them to retire even earlier while still receiving a full pension. These régimes spéciaux (special regimes) exist in many countries for, for instance, police officers, members of the military and prison guards in order to recognise the pénibilité (the burden or hardship) of their job. There are several jobs where it is impossible to perform them properly after a certain age. Can you imagine how a firefighter over 60 should save another bulimia patient from a burning building? Can you also imagine the state of a nurse’s or a construction worker’s back after their 60th birthday?

After all, there are professions that cannot be carried out full-time after 60 years because of the demands during work. Some can be done for a few hours a week, but it must be planned in such a way that such part-time work can also be done on a full-time basis.

Certain jobs are physically also limited. Can you imagine a 60+ dancer still throwing himself up from his shoulders, or catching female dancers flying at him with a good speed?

In France, Unions cover not so many workforce, but they frame the régimes spéciaux as part of an attack to people’s entitlements and say that this is an attack against workers in general. The general public is also convinced about what the new pension arrangement would entail for their grandparents and the elderly.

France and Belgium, have a pay-as-you-go pension system, where today’s workers pay for today’s retirees; instead of saving for their own retirement, today’s workers will rely on tomorrow’s workers to pay for their retirement, but with the population diminishing and robots taking over a lot of work, there shall be fewer people working and not willing anymore to pay for those not working.

In Belgium lots of people make sure some money is put aside in a private pension fund. But in France they do not like so much that idea. The French associate private pensions with an unwanted Anglo-Saxon cultural invasion.

“(Public) pensions are the incarnation of French solidarity,”

says Denis Latulippe, a professor at the Université Laval and a director at Desjardins, a financial services company.

“Talking about private pension funds is like trying to break the French apart.”

A big mistake that Macron made, which completely lost its popularity, but also made the French people so angry, comes through his unwillingness to listen to the French People and then invoke an incredibly undemocratic rule. Macron’s invocation of article 49.3 — passing the pension reform by force instead of through a vote in Parliament — was clearly a bridge too far, considered the ultimate shutdown of expression. It also means that the street protests today are not just about pension reforms, but about the perceived denial of democracy and the general feeling that Macron is out of touch.

The far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose Rassemblement National (National Rally) is the biggest opposition party in parliament, held a May Day gathering in the Normandy port of Le Havre, accusing Macron of stoking tensions in society.

President Macron’s pro-business policies and the perceived erosion of workers’ rights is working on the nerves of the general population.

The pension reform protests in France highlighted the deep divisions and tensions within the country over issues of social justice, economic inequality, and labour rights. Choosing for article 49.3 was just putting oil on the fire which got already burning since a few years, triggering the gilets jaunes or Yellow Vests Protesters to come back on the streets.

It looks like we could face now the most violent riots since those of May 68. In these 2023 demonstrations, however, there are so many violence seekers and anarchists who actually undermine the demonstration with their violent actions against the police, which gives them more attention from the foreign press than the actual demonstrators, who sometimes have to choose the hare path to secure themselves.

Bad enough, the press wants to portray those amok makers as so-called left-wing protesters, while they have nothing to do with socialists, Marxists or communists at all and even give them a bad name. For those mostly young guests, it is just a matter of destroying as much as possible and chasing the order troops.

The government rubs itself in the hands by drawing attention away from the essence and putting the demonstrators in a bad light so that the government hopes that more people will lose their sympathy for the demonstrators.

“They (the government) are trying to change the subject quite quickly, but let’s say it’s not working. So much the better!”

sculptor Antoine Eveillo told journalists.

In several cities in France, go-getters tried to clarify what it really is about and how to act today to safeguard both democracy and to protect residents’ pension rights.

Sophie Binet, leader of the hard-left CGT union said:

“The executive cannot govern without the support of its people.”

Many people’s dissatisfaction at being told to work longer was summed up by a banner that said,

“Retirement before arthritis!”

We can only hope that skilled journalists will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and listen enough to people who are really wanting good for France and the current as well as the future population.

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Please come to read:

Work is not a curse

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Additional reading

1. Entering 2022 still Aiming for a society without exploitation or oppression
2. Make May Day a carnival of democracy and revolt
3. 2023 May Day marches and rallies in the United Kingdom

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