“Even chopped steaks have become a great luxury”: processions against the high cost of living are in full swing in France

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the report above. Click on the video to watch it in full. The streets of Paris, crowded.

The processions were packed in the capital but also in several cities in France, Thursday November 5: between 600,000 according to the prefecture and 1.6 million demonstrators according to the unions throughout the country. Education, ecology and purchasing power, these demands were defended by high school students, retirees and even families. Nadja demonstrates with her son.

She earns a pretty good living and yet has to make choices on a daily basis: "We haven't turned on the heating yet. So it's 17 at home, but we're making a little savings like that." Processions all over France Earlier in the morning in Perpignan, between 3,800 and 5,000 demonstrators marched.

Among them, French people who are making ends meet more than difficult, like a mother of three children. “I'm not even on the minimum wage, so at a certain point, it's not possible. I have the impression of having a salary from 20 years ago.

I can't survive on my salary. I don’t even survive, I don’t even live,” she assures. Her anger is shared by this specialized educator.

“We work, we do demanding jobs, we end our months uncovered. Is it normal that employees cannot finish the month? No, it is not possible to have to make choices: go on vacation with our children or go shopping,” she criticizes.

Doing your shopping to fill your fridge with few resources: in Lyon (Rhône), a mother on the RSA does not always succeed. “I took inflation head-on. Even hamburgers have become a great luxury.

The meals we skipped with the kids, I can't count them anymore," she confides. A deep crisis in purchasing power In Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), there were between 14,000 and 150,000 demonstrators. Here too, the watchword: incomes that are too low and which are not increasing quickly enough according to certain employees, even in large groups.

A protester demands general raises. “The workload is only increasing. On the other hand, salaries are not keeping up at all.

We are being offered slingshot increases for very few employees at the end of the year,” she assures. The crisis in purchasing power has strongly mobilized today, with up to 350,000 demonstrators in the capital, according to the unions. Their representatives are demanding that the lowest salaries be reevaluated quickly.

Machine-translated from French