Protests celebrated International Workers’ Day in France, Spain and Berlin on Saturday despite restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In France, the processions gathered, according to the CGT union, more than 170,000 people, a figure that the government estimates rather at a little over 106,000.
In Paris, shortly before the departure of the procession of several thousand people, the secretary general of the CGT Philippe Martinez recalled that there had been “a lot of frustration” last year with a contained May 1. He was delighted to resume “good habits” in this way.
Brief clashes opposed, in several cities, including Paris, members of the violent far left movement Black Block and the police, with tear gas canisters and a few arrests.
In Spain, the number of participants in the demonstrations was limited due to the pandemic: there were thus a thousand in Madrid, between the town hall and the Puerta del Sol square.
In the German capital, a demonstration at the call of the left and the extreme left gathered some 5,000 people, according to the police who had deployed en masse with 5,600 police officers for fear of possible overflows.
About twenty rallies were planned in Berlin, with slogans ranging from rent increases to migration policy to opposition to restrictive measures linked to the pandemic.
Lots of reasons to protest
The CGT, which has counted in France nearly 300 demonstrations, had called, with the unions FO, FSU and Solidaires to make this May 1 a day “for employment, wages, public services, social protection, freedoms and peace in the world ”.
Jobs, salaries, management of the Covid crisis by the government, restrictions on freedoms …: in the processions, the demands were varied, the challenge of the unemployment insurance reform, which is due to come into force on July 1, coming back on a recurring basis.
“We have many reasons to come and demonstrate: the health and social context, the overall impoverishment of society,” said in Lyon (center-East) Ivan Gineste, 50, employed in a high school in the city.
In the procession in Strasbourg (East), Clarisse Daull, retiree of the edition, reported having wanted “to come twice”, having “suffered a lot not to parade last year”. “For a year, there has only been one subject, it is the Covid” while “the workers continue to suffer”, she lamented.
Highlighting the health risk, another important union, the CFDT, had opted for a virtual rally on Facebook with activists.
In the Spanish capital, union leaders Pepe Alvarez (UGT) and Unai Sordo (CCOO), in their speeches, called on the government to keep commitments made, but delayed by the pandemic, such as renouncing a controversial reform of labor laws. work, raise the minimum wage and pass a law on equal pay for men and women.
Labor Minister Yolanda Diaz, who addressed the demonstrators in Madrid, said that “this May 1 is not just any day, because the values of decent employment, solidarity, equality and of social justice (…) are undoubtedly the most effective responses to the social and economic crisis that we are going through ”.
