“Maintaining retirement at age 60 would be fantastic,” explained Christine Herriaut, a 60-year-old nurse, to Ms. Borne who asked her if she had “any particular concerns”.

The Prime Minister, candidate in the 6th constituency of Calvados, exchanged with the inhabitants of Verson, near Caen, during a village festival.

“In all walks of life, we see people who are more and more burnt out. These people, when they see that their careers are being extended, when the work has lost all its meaning”, added, to his side, Dominique Thiebot, psychologist, 62 years old.

“When you see people who are forced to go see a psychologist (…) because they are asked to work less well”, he added, “we ask them to make numbers and when we asked to make numbers, we do the job less well”.

“It is an observation that we make on a daily basis,” added Ms. Herriault.

Ms. Borne replied that they had to “give meaning back to work. There is no doubt”. “We also have to work on how we can avoid having people broken at 45/50 (…) It’s inseparable”.

“What will you do for pensions?” A retired farmer had asked her a little earlier when approaching the LREM candidate during a garage sale in Thury-Harcourt, 30 km from Verson.

“I was a farmer, I worked all my life (…) from the age of 15” for “only 1,100 euros (retirement editor’s note). It’s not normal,” said this retiree.

Ms. Borne replied that pensions would be revalued on July 1.

Not far from her, one of the sellers of this garage sale, Didier Payen, 66, opposed to the project to postpone the legal retirement age to bring it to 65 in 2031, refused to shake hands to Madame Borne.

“Being called lazy when I started working at 14. The President called me lazy,” said this CGT activist.

“I think there is a misunderstanding,” replied Ms. Borne.

In September 2017, Emmanuel Macron, before a day of action against the reform of the labor code, declared that he “would be absolutely determined and would not give in to anything, neither to lazy people nor to cynics”.