Workers across France went on strike on Thursday after the country’s trade unions issued a joint call, and hundreds of thousands of people were expected to take to the streets demanding higher pay, Al Jazeera reported.
Protesters gathered from the morning in Paris, in Marseille and Lyon in the south, in Nantes to the west and in Lille in the north. The main Paris rally was scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. GMT, and CNN described expectations of the largest day of protest in years, with high school students blocking streets with garbage bins.
The unions are demanding an increase in the minimum wage and higher salaries for all workers, among other reforms. They also joined forces with a spreading student protest movement over under-resourced schools, according to The Washington Post, which reported confrontations between students and the police in Paris earlier in the week.
Public and private education unions called the strike alongside unions representing rail workers, public hospitals and the postal service. Around 16 percent of teachers nationwide stayed off the job, the education ministry said, and Le Monde reported that more than 600,000 people rallied across the country.
The strike landed on a government already on the defensive. Street protests over purchasing power, public services and what demonstrators call fiscal and social justice had been building since October, including an Oct. 24 march in Paris that drew labor unions, students and veterans of the Yellow Vest movement, The Los Angeles Times reported. For President Emmanuel Macron, the unrest compounds the pressure with a presidential election due in 2027.