The Latest Breaking News from Sophie Binet

Workers have gone on strike at the five-star hotel in Paris where members of the International Olympic Committee are staying

French union leader calls for mass strikes to pressure Macron after election results. Macron delays new prime minister appointment.

France’s two main trade unions are now led by women after Marylise Léon on Wednesday took the helm of the reformist French Democratic Confederation of Labour, the CFDT – France’s largest union. Her promotion comes three months after Sophie Binet was elected general secretary of the hardline CGT.

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets across France on Tuesday for what will be the fourteenth day of demonstrations since January to oppose French President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform.

French authorities plan to deploy 11,000 police, including 4,000 in Paris, on Tuesday, when unions have called a nationwide day of protests against President Emmanuel Macron's law to raise the retirement age, the interior ministry said on Sunday.

Trade union membership in France has been declining since the 1980s and is now one of the lowest in western Europe. And yet unions can still mobilise widespread strikes and demos, as the recent pension reform protests proved. What's behind this French paradox?

Paris (AFP) - President Emmanuel Macron is on Monday to address France for the first time since signing into law his controversial pension reform, facing warnings the political and social crisis sparked by the changes is not over.

The French government will work out a coherent plan to get France back on its feet in the next 100 days and heal the country after weeks of protests against an unpopular pension reform bill, President Emmanuel Macron said in a televised speech on Monday.

France's Constitutional Council will on Friday rule on the legality of President Emmanuel Macron's deeply unpopular pensions overhaul. Police have errected anti-riot barriers and have banned demonstrations around the seat of the council in central Paris until Saturday morning. Two decisions are to announced by the end of the day.