I see a lot of incomprehension online about our pension reform and the anger it generates in France, and what it often boils down to is "why are they so angry, 64 is plenty young to retire?"
I don't agree, but even if I did I would still oppose the reform. Here are some of the reasons why:
We already need 43 full years of work and tax contributions to be able to retire. Which means college-educated people were never going to retire at 64 anyway, let alone 62. This reform is aimed at people who start working early, mostly in low-paying jobs.
There's very little provision made in this law for hard/dangerous/manual labour.
There's no provision made for women who stop working to raise their children (51% of women already retire without a "complete career," which means they only retire on a partial pension, vs. 25% of men).
At 64, 1/3 of the poorest workers will already be dead. In France, between the richest and the poorest men, there's a 13 years gap in life expectancy.
Beyond life expectancy, at that age a lot of people (especially poorer, non-college educated) have too many health-related issues to be able to work. Not only is it cruel to ask them to work longer, if they can't work at all that's two more years to hold on with no pension
Unemployment in France is still fairly high (7%). Young people already have a hard time finding work, and this is going to make things even harder for them
Macron cut taxes on the rich and lost the country around 16 Billions € in tax revenue. Our estimated pension deficit should peak at 12 Billions worst case scenario.
While I'm on wealth redistribution (no, not soviet style, but I think there should be a cap on wealth concentration. Nobody needs to be a billionaire.): some of the massive profits of last year should go to workers and to the state to be redistributed, including to fund pensions. The state subsidized companies and corporations during the pandemic, Macron even said "no matter the cost" and spent 206 Billions € on businesses. Now he's going after the poorest workers in the country for an hypothetical 12 Billions??
Implicit in all of this is the question of systemic racism. French workers from immigrant families are already more likely to have started their careers early, to have low-paying jobs, are less likely to be college-educated, more at risk for disabilities and chronic illnesses, etc., so this is going to disproportionately affect them
This is not even touching on the fact that he didn't let lawmakers vote on it, meaning he knew he wouldn't get a majority of votes in parliament, or that 70% of the population is against this law. Pushing it through anyway is blatant authoritarianism.
TL;DR: This is only tangentially about retirement age. The reform will make life harder for people with low incomes, or with no higher education, for manual workers, for women—mothers especially, for POC, for people with disabilities or chronic conditions, etc. This is about solidarity.
Hope (sincerely) this helps.
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