Inflation is rampant in France – more so, it seems, in political and media rhetoric than in the official price index.

Tuesday’s patchy one-day strikes in France were claimed in advance as the beginning of a “new May 1968”.  The radical left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that they were the start of a new “Popular Front” (the movement which won French worker two-weeks paid holidays in the 1930s).

Really?

Only one in four rail workers joined Tuesday’s strike. One rail depot in three voted to prolong the action. The strike was observed by 6 percent of teachers and 4 percent of public employees.

Paris Metro worked normally; the capital’s buses less so.

After more than two weeks of blockage in oil refineries, 90 French oil workers were still on strike by Wednesday (out of 5,000 or more nationwide). “Only” one in four filling stations is still short of fuel.

Mélenchon’s march in Paris on Sunday “against the high cost of living” was even more of a flop. He promised 300,000 marchers and claimed 140,000. An independent count for French media organisations calculated the turn-out at 29,500.

So President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne can breathe a sigh of relief? The revolution has been cancelled?

Not exactly. The oil refinery strike will continue for a while. There may be only 90 workers on strike at five out of seven refineries but they are the ones who turn the wheels and press the buttons that make the petrol and diesel flow.

Despite the government’s “requisition” of key workers, it will be well into next week before filling stations return to normal.

Although the threat of a lengthy rail strike seems to have been averted, some militant rail workers are calling for a series of “days of action” (ie inaction) this month and next. Workers in the nuclear power industry, already on strike intermittently since January, are threatening to delay the emergency repairs and routine maintenance to France’s ailing reactors needed to keep the lights on this winter.

There is a genuine problem about pay.  Some industries have failed to hike wages in line with inflation (officially 5.9 percent, the lowest in the Eurozone). As a result, some workers find that the 8 percent cumulative rise in the minimum wage (Le Smic) this year has relegated them into the ranks of the lower paid.

President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne were slow to grasp this problem and slow to realise that the huge windfall profits of the oil industry would make the well-paid refinery workers into an unlikely symbol of social injustice. A series of ministers in recent days has belatedly called on employers to restore wage differentials as rapidly as they can.

Tuesday’s strikes were also, in theory, a response to the government’s decision to “break” (or at least bend) the refinery strike by forcing a few key workers to return to their posts. A series of court judgements in recent days has confirmed that the government had a legal right to do so but the decision to resort to this power has undoubtedly deepened the unrest.

Ultimately, however, other, factors are also in play.

First, there are the four-yearly “industrial elections” in December which will decide the relative strengths of France’s five main trades union federations. The traditionally hard-line CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail) wants to prove that intransigence works better than the softer, more painstaking approach of the CFDT (Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail) which replaced the CGT as France’s Number One federation four years ago.

There is also a power struggle going on within the CGT, whose leader Philippe Martinez retires (aged 62) early next year. It is no coincidence that the “chemicals” branch of the CGT, to which oil workers belong, is one of the most hard-line within a hard-line federation.

For the militant unions, and many marchers interviewed on Tuesday, the strikes are, in part, a warning to Macron and Borne on the pension reform due this winter.

Oil, nuclear and rail workers are among the groups with special deals which allow them to retire even earlier than 62 on full pensions. They also among those workers who have the power to inflict the greatest pain on the French economy.

If the government rides out the strikes, it will be emboldened in its intention to shove through its plans to increase the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64 over the next four years (and to 65 eventually).

Borne’s minority government will use its emergency power under article 49.3 of the constitution to push through a first reading of its 2023 budget plans. This will produce an explosion of faux indignation amongst the opposition deputies of Left, Right and Far Right who have done all in their power in recent days to make it inevitable.

But that will be nothing compared to the reaction, in terms of strikes and street protests, if Macron also uses 49.3 (as he can and says he will) to enact the pension reform next February or March. Only 38 percent of French people said they supported yesterday’s strikes; over 70 percent are against pension reform.

The present social unrest will stutter on for a while. The great problem for the government may soon be the nuclear workers rather than the 90 striking refinery workers.

But the true conflagration lies a couple of months ahead of us.