Contestation of pension reform: government increases tone against actions on electricity network

The Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, encourages to file a complaint against electricity cuts, which threatens the CGT.

MO12345lemonde with AFP

touch the electricity network, it’s no. The government has raised the tone on Tuesday, January 24, against the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), which threatens to cut the current or intervene on the meters to lower the invoices of certain customers, as part of the reform of pensions, highly disputed by the union.

The Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, encouraged to file a complaint against the power cuts that the CGT threatens to put in to obtain the withdrawal of the pension reform. “It is not legal,” said the Minister on RMC, warning against the risk of “breaking” certain industrial installations if the electricity is stopped. “We can be against a bill, we can manifest, we can talk about it strongly on television sets, but intimidation is unacceptable,” she said.

Limited voluntary cuts have already taken place last week. The Renaissance MP for Lot Huguette Tiegna thus said that her permanence, in the center of Figeac, had been deprived of electricity on Thursday during the demonstration against the pension reform.

“The cut came from 2 p.m. to 5:45 p.m., only in the street where there is my permanence, the sub-prefecture, shops, including a pharmacy and a bakery. It is the permanence that was targeted , the CGT had announced that they were going to carry out actions, “she said to the France-Presse agency. “It could have endangered human lives, people under respirator, for example,” she added. She said she wanted to file a complaint, just like Enedis, who confirmed the cut.

“It is not up to the CGT to make the law”

Thursday, two other voluntary and limited cuts had been identified by Enedis, affecting in particular a thousand customers in an industrial zone in Massy (Essonne) and buildings of the prefecture, the departmental council, the regional council, the town hall of the town hall and the academic inspection in Chaumont (Haute-Marne).

“It is not up to the CGT to make the law” but “to parliamentarians”, hammered, for his part, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, Tuesday on Europe 1, after the CGT -Energie mentioned the possibility, in Marseille, to carry out a “manipulation on the counter” so that the bakers can benefit from strong reductions on their invoice.

“We have the technical capacity to do so, without endangering neither property nor people,” his secretary general, Renaud Henry, told AFP, without giving more details on the way of proceeding, who However, would be “completely illegal”. The mayor deemed such “unacceptable” measures.

First union of the electrical and gas industries (IEG), whose special pension plan would be deleted, the CGT Mines-Energie warned on Monday that it would prohibit anything “until withdrawal” of the project .

/Media reports cited above.