Don’t raise my retirement age, French youth say, afraid pension reforms augur meager future

French youths protest over higher retirement age

PARIS — The front lines of the latest French protest against raising the retirement age revealed a remarkable sight: Not the slightest wrinkle, not a single gray hair.

Brandishing “Save our Pensions!” banners, students who haven’t even entered the job market yet are already worried about what happens when they leave it.

Welcome to France, where workers’ rights are so deeply entwined into the culture that even teenagers are unsettled about plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, which is still among the lowest in Europe. The reform protest brought nearly a million people out into the streets across the country Thursday.

Young people fear they will lose the most from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reforms, which aim to cut France’s ballooning deficit and make the money-losing pension system break even starting in 2018.

Despite the protest’s colored balloons and jovial atmosphere, Julie Mandelbaum, a 23-year-old geopolitics student from the prestigious Institut de Sciences Politiques, was not in a party mood.

Four years ago, she erected barricades in front of several French universities to stop a contentious work contract that would have made it easier for companies to hire — and fire — young workers. The government then abandoned the proposal.

Mandelbaum says the government should tax high wage-earners and banks instead to ensure there is enough money for pensions when she retires.

“Don’t let the government squander away our pension!” she bellowed into her microphone, leading the march for France’s main student union UNEF.

Students everywhere protest, of course — but rarely over the issue of retirement reform. While union membership in France is relatively low, the spirit of protest courses through French society. Children grow up watching their teachers strike, protests can be held even for minor issues and a national union for high school students joins all major protests.

At Thursday’s protest, students fired red firecrackers into the air to get their voices heard in a debate that has focused on the nearly retired or those in strenuous jobs. Their presence is also a cry for attention by a generation that worries they’ll be worse off than their parents.

In some ways, these protests are also demanding action on jobs. Unemployment in France, at 9.9 percent nationwide, is especially high among young people and seniors.

Sabrina Hamlaoui, a 25-year-old graduate student from Seine-Saint Denis, has been jobless for over a year after a stretch of unpaid internships.

“Instead of supporting its youth, the government wants to put us in competition with our grandparents for the same jobs. It keeps them in employment longer and us out of the job market,” she said.

French students are staying in university longer and doing more internships because it’s difficult to get into the job market. That means many don’t start paying into the pension system until their late 20s — yet the reforms require workers to pay for 42 years to get a full pension.

Mandelbaum held a white placard with the equation, “27 + 42 equals 69.”

“We don’t get a steady job until we’re 27, if we have to pay taxes for 42 more years on top of that, there’s no way we’ll retire at 62, not if we want to have a full pension,” she said.

According to a national survey in April by pollster TNS-Sofres, 54 percent of young people are worried about the pension budget.

The head of France’s employers’ union MEDEF, Laurence Parisot, warned that the reform does “not ensure that young people would receive full pension benefits when they retire.”

But Labor Minister Eric Woerth says, given the country’s rising life expectancy, “working longer is unavoidable.”

Olivier Val, president of the right-wing collective France’s Forgotten Generation, insisted that the current reform is not aggressive enough.

“It’s like putting a plaster on a gushing wound. The reform will not bring down the deficit and in 10 years time we’ll be here again.”

The French reforms pale in comparison with more drastic changes elsewhere in Europe — neighboring Germany is to gradually raise its retirement age from 65 to 67. But many here see the retirement age of 60 and full pensions as pillars of the “acquis sociaux,” the social welfare achievements that underpin modern France.

Jean Baptiste Prevost, president of student union UNEF, told The Associated Press that “a higher life expectancy should not be synonymous with a deterioration in social conditions.”

Standing near the former Bastille prison in Paris, one of the world’s most famous revolutionary sites, Mandelbaum was determined to force Sarkozy to change tack.

“We stood up to the government before when they wanted to attack our workers’ rights and we won. We can do so again,” she declared.