Under the gilding of the Elysée Palace in Paris, they held their first meeting and gauged the extent of their ideological differences. In the early evening of Tuesday, August 29, French President Emmanuel Macron met Sophie Binet, the general secretary of the CGT, for over an hour. The head of state was keen to speak to the leader of the hardline union who took up her post at the end of March. He has done the same, or is about to do so, with Patrick Martin, the new president of the employers' federation MEDEF (elected on July 6) and Marylise Léon, the newly-appointed head of the CFDT union, seeking to establish direct contact with three figures recently propelled to the helm of France's most prominent labor and business organizations.

For this face-to-face rendez-vous, Binet told Le Monde, she "arrived with her agenda," taking advantage of Macron's invitation to pass on several messages and draw his attention to specific issues.

"I addressed him in all gravity because the situation in the country seems very worrying to me," she said. Following a much-contested pension system reform earlier this year, which the president "rammed through" despite the opposition of an "overwhelming" majority of the population, Binet stressed that "mistrust of the government" was running deep among trade unions and, more broadly, "within the world of work."

"We can talk of a split, with possible electoral consequences to the benefit of the far right," Binet said, adding she had "warned" Macron "about his historical responsibility and the fact that his actions risked contributing to the Rassemblement National (RN) coming to power" in 2027. "By ignoring the opinion of employees' organizations and public opinion, many men and women will consider there is no alternative to Marine Le Pen."

The trade unionist sees a referendum on pensions as the only way to "appease the anger and turn the page" of the social conflict that lasted throughout the first half of the year. The left-wing parties making up the New Popular Ecological and Social Union (NUPES) alliance have also pressed for a direct vote. Macron "cannot be right against everyone else," Binet said. According to her account of the meeting, Macron unsurprisingly rejected the proposal, arguing the legal retirement age had to be pushed back – from 62 to 64 by 2030 – to guarantee the system's financial equilibrium. "We totally disagree on this point," said Binet. "The CGT has solutions (...), which he doesn't want to hear about."

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