There’s no doubting the importance of Friday’s strikes in France. The actions on December 5 provided a powerful rebuke to Emmanuel Macron’s assault on pensions — and showed that millions of people are prepared to resist the planned dismantling of France’s welfare state. Reflected in local mobilizations in hundreds of towns and cities across France, this was not just a “day of action,” but the first day of what even now looks like a protracted strike movement.

Already on Friday, the turnout was impressive. Economic activity in Paris and its environs came to a standstill, with nearly all metro stations shut. Nationwide, over 90 percent of train services were cancelled, while public-sector employees as diverse as posties, energy workers, and magistrates also joined the strike in significant numbers. Even more surprising was the mass involvement of schoolteachers, facing not only heavy pension cuts but also a buildup of “reforms” piling pressure on the sector.

Private-sector workers participated in lower but still significant numbers: by Thursday, the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) union had received strike calls from at least two thousand workplaces in the private sector across the country. As expected, oil refinery workers joined the strike in massive numbers, and there was also significant participation in France’s domestic airlines. The Renault car plants announced that an average of 5 percent of its workforce had taken part in the strike — a modest figure, by historic standards, but still the highest of the last decade, at the company level.