Strikes hit France as unions fight Sarkozy reforms

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

: France faced travel chaos on Wednesday as transport unions broadened a nationwide strike against a pensions reform that President Nicolas Sarkozy says is needed to shore up state accounts.

Workers at rail operator SNCF went on strike on Tuesday evening and were joined on Wednesday by Paris transport workers and staff at power and gas utilities EdF and GdF -- the second time they have all downed tools in a month.

The open-ended stoppage poses the biggest challenge to Sarkozy since he came to power six months ago pledging a deep-seated reform of the economy.

Only a handful of trains were scheduled to run on Wednesday and Paris’s metro and bus systems were operating vastly reduced services, although some lines were less affected than initially predicted. Energy unions said they planned targeted power cuts of individual buildings rather than widescale blackouts.

At stake in the dispute is the government’s determination to end so-called “special regimes” that let some 500,000 state sector workers retire after making two and a half years less pension contributions than anyone else.

All previous attempts to reform the special regimes have failed in the face of massive street protests, but Sarkozy is confident he will win this show of force, buoyed by public opinion which is firmly against the strikers.

A survey in L’Express magazine published on Wednesday said 58 percent of people thought the government should not back down. A survey published by right-leaning Le Figaro newspaper said 84 percent of people did not expect Sarkozy to buckle.

And there were signs that the big unions did not have an appetite for a prolonged conflict, with the leader of the Communist-backed CGT, Bernard Thibault, retreating from his previous refusal to hold company-by-company negotiations. Thibault had been demanding centralised talks between government, managers and unions to reach a global deal.

Labour minister Xavier Bertrand had a series of meetings planned with various unions on Wednesday. “This strike has to end as quickly as possible,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon told TF1 television after the strike began late on Tuesday.

However, other disputes with students and public servants are brewing, public discontent with the cost of living and rising petrol and housing prices is mounting, and the transport strike has the potential to widen if it drags on.