Pension meeting with PM Elisabeth Borne a 'failure', say French unions

Paris: The last-ditch meeting between French unions and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to ease tensions over a divisive pension reform yielded no results as the leader refused to revoke the changes, according to union representatives. After the meeting, the disgruntled union heads called for French people to take to the streets and strike en masse on Thursday during an 11th day of coordinated nationwide action against the bill. After barely an hour-long meeting, one of the representatives of the country’s eight main unions Cyril Chabanier said,“It’s clearly a failure when the prime minister won’t even allow a way in to that discussion.” “We again told the prime minister that the only democratic outcome could be the text’s withdrawal. The prime minister replied that she wished to maintain the text, a grave decision,” he added. Because of his flagship pension reform, President Emmanuel Macron is facing the most difficult challenge of his second term. The reform includes raising the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. After PM Borne invoked a controversial executive order to ram the bill through parliament without a vote despite months of mass protests on 16 March, unrest erupted across the country. Unions had warned ahead of Wednesday’s meeting with Borne that they would storm out if she refused to discuss going back on a minimum retirement age of 64. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.