It’s been some time since citizen action actually led to pregress in France.
We had worker’s rights improvements thanks to strikes, occupations and violence against the factorie’s bosses at the start of 20th century, which in turned fueled a socialist movement that got a real left elected in 1936 - to which we owe,among other stuff, mandatory pto for everyone.
We had a great social security system built after ww2, because the resistance against nazis was mostly made of communists and all the major firms had collaborated so they did not have much of a say (some were nationalized when the war ended).
The latest thing I can think of is from the 90s, when the legal weekly work time was reduced to 35hrs (you can still work overtime but your employer has to pay you more).
But the nineties is also the point where the left started losing power, and lots of good thing started being undone (salaries stopped rising with inflation, taxbreaks for the rich and the big companies started multiplying…).
In the last two decades, most of our protests and strikes were not to gain new rights and make our lives better, but to try and stop rights being taken away (alas with little to no success): retirement, workers negotiation power, social security, unemployment…
All of it is under attack from the right (which is in power since then) in what looks like a continued effort to move towards the american ultraliberal way of doing things. Health, education, transportation and retirement for exemple are becoming increasingly privatised - it’s easy to do, cut the funding of the public services, watch them drown, accuse them of not being efficient enough, introduce new legislation to make space for the private sector.
I really wish we’d revolt again, and the “gilets jaunes” from 2018-2020 seemed like a step in the right direction (not perfect of course, and the far-right succeded a little in being included in the movement) but was stopped first with extreme police brutality then by the lockdown and it never got rolling again.
Recently, American worker’s unions look a lot more french than the french ones do, and I hope we’ll be able to get some inspiration from you !