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French unions protested for a fourteenth day on Tuesday against government plans to raise the retirement age to 64, in what could be a final attempt to pressure lawmakers into scrapping a law that is already on the books.
Thousands staged an initially peaceful demonstration in the city of Nantes, which included union members carrying banners, smoke from red flares, and a choir.
"We haven't yet played all our cards, and I think we need to keep going. We need to go until the end," 64-year-old protester and maintenance worker Jacques Godin said.
President Emmanuel Macron's decision to force the reform through with special constitutional powers prompted angry protests this spring, but the issue has slowly moved down the media agenda, making it harder for unions to mobilize.
Between 400,000 and 600,000 people are expected to turn out at protests across France, authorities said, which would be down from more than a million who took part in marches at the height of the pension protests earlier this year.
Inter-city trains are likely to be only "slightly disrupted," the SNCF railway company said, while the metro network in Paris will run a normal service One-third of flights out of Paris-Orly airport have been cancelled, however.
Global's Alexia Kapralos reports.
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