Sarkozy grapples with another strike

Paris: French workers went on strike on Tuesday to protest against reforms to the pension system and the 35-hour working week in the latest of a series of challenges to be faced by President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Powerful unions CGT and CFDT called for mass demonstrations against the government's plans to extend the number of years employees must work to get a full pension to 41 from 40, and to give companies more scope to by-pass the 35-hour week.

"Employers will be able to do almost anything they like unilaterally. The government is opening the way for total deregulation," said Francois Chereque, head of CFDT, in an interview on France Info radio.

Welfare Minister Xavier Bertrand is due to present a new Bill to the cabinet on Wednesday, reforming the 35-hour week, which was introduced ten years ago and denounced by Sarkozy as an economic disaster.

The MEDEF bosses' group defended the reform but said the government could have avoided conflict by heeding an April deal between MEDEF and the main unions on the subject rather than going beyond what they had agreed.

"We would have preferred a different method to move things along ... [but] we consider that the government's proposal is good for companies," MEDEF head Laurence Parisot told reporters.

Chereque predicted the demonstrations would be bigger than on the last major day of strikes, May 22, thanks to the participation of private as well as public sector workers. Unions claimed 700,000 marched against pension reforms then, while police estimated 300,000.

Bernard Thibault, head of CGT, said he expected over a million people to take part in demonstrations in about 120 towns and cities across France on Tuesday.

Disruptions

Train traffic was disrupted early in the day on regional networks in the south while bus and tram services in several major cities including Nice were hit, according to radio reports. Long-distance trains were running normally.

The Paris metro was also operating normally but there were some disruptions on the regional RER network and commuter trains. Road traffic authorities reported 166 kilometres of traffic jams around Paris as commuters avoided the rail network.

The unions were taking a gamble by calling for strikes and mass marches after months of protests by teachers over job cuts, port workers over reforms, fishermen and truckers over fuel prices and other professions over pension reforms.