It’s a Monday morning in June, and the sun is beating down on a postwar housing tower in the northern Marseille neighborhood of Malpassé, a sleepy residential quarter a world away from the bustling city center. While it’s hard to spot the union hall from a distance, the red-and-yellow stickers near the door leave no doubt: this is the home of the local telecom workers branch of the CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail).

Today the space is reserved for the weekly meeting of the union’s retiree section —  a ritual that’s as much about conducting official business as it is a chance for the roughly two dozen attendees to spend some quality time together. The group typically sets aside the first hour and a half for catching up before heading out to lunch at La Gratinée, a Corsican restaurant run by former CGT activists from the city’s port. When the crew returns to the office, the meeting kicks off. While it naturally involves plotting out actions —  a mix of demonstrations, petitions, and letter-writing campaigns —  it typically starts with an open-ended discussion of the news.

“We talk about everything, and we don’t hesitate to speak our minds,” explains Jean-Paul, eighty-one, who began his career as a clerk in the post office before becoming an operations agent for the old public phone company, both of which used to be overseen by the same state-owned entity. “It’s true democracy in action!”