It’s a chilly, rainy day in Annonay, just south of Lyon. In the large parking lot of the central bus station, more than ten thousand people have gathered despite the drizzle. On a banner hanging over the crowd, thick black letters read, “Dussopt, socialist one day, traitor every day.” The reference is to Olivier Dussopt, the town’s former mayor, who is now France’s minister of labor. Protestors opposing his pension reform have been showing their dismay in record-high protests across France over the past two months.

“We feel beyond betrayed”, said Sebastien Chaneguier, union representative of Annonay’s city hall employees. “He’s forgotten where he comes from”.

Dussopt was once the beloved Socialist Party mayor of Annonay, his own hometown of sixteen thousand inhabitants. As mayor he was seen as a stalwart of progressive values in a deindustrialized area. Now, as a member of centrist president Emmanuel Macron’s government, he has become the face of a historically unpopular reform, which aims to raise the retirement age from sixty-two to sixty-four. Many in Annonay see the reform proposal, and Dussopt’s part in it, as a profound betrayal of them and his socialist roots.