I feel most of us have been conditioned to prefer only the mildest and most inoffensive ways of protesting as valid and consider the rest impossible. In my view, governments today ignore protests because they don't actually threaten anything. A protest with teeth might be mass absenteeism from work, refusing to pay taxes, something that actually hurts.. although in this case it's probably a bit much, when the threat of real protest is completely gone you end up with authoritarian governments.
France does protests more effectively. The government is paying attention there and trying very hard to hide the fact that the emperor has no clothes.
They are protesting against the same things that would make their situation better (like increasing the retirement age)
But they're too stupid to realize that
How does increasing the retirement age help? Genuinely curious
Pensions outspend every other social expense in France
The retirees have greater disposable income than the young people (read, most people in the labour market)
And of course the number of retirees is going up every day
They can imagine themselves growing old which is pretty smart for young people
They cannot imagine themselves getting less than they put in because of an ever increasing proportion of non-workers.
Ironically, the younger people from whom to extract productivity to pay for the defined benefit pensions are being supplied by immigrants, who are also politically unpopular.
Or even just peacefully blocking the entrance to parliament and forcing them to arrest you to do their jobs.