They were fully prepared to turn the working populace into slave labor and then the government was shocked to see that descision was unpopular.
One thing that catches my eye about this article is that the Guardian specifies “young people” as the cause for the pushback, Gen Z and Millennials, as if everyone else would be perfectly fine working until they fucking die. Just more “Zoomers bad” rhetoric.
In this specific case they did actually cave to the people though.
They will do it the Euro way - they will try again and again and again until people will not protest. And in the meantime they will attack the workers from another angle.
That’s right. They’ll add an hour a week until they get to 69.
Btw since i wrote that comment the Euro way just changed too, Macron said “fuck you” and forced that as a decreee by his totally democratic dictatorial power.