Paris: Further strikes disrupted rail and air transport in France yesterday but the broader protest over plans to raise the retirement age appeared to be waning a day after parliament adopted pension reform legislation.
Flights in and out of French airports were reduced by 30 to 50 per cent due to a one-day strike by air traffic controllers, and a rolling strike by rail workers halved some services but caused less disruption than previously to high-speed links.
Workers at the LyondellBasell refinery in southeast France voted to stop blocking fuel from leaving, in another sign that protests that have hit petrol pumps are easing. President Nicolas Sarkozy refused to back down when unions mounted wave after wave of strikes and nationwide street rallies in the past two months over his presidency's flagship reform.
Union leaders noted the bill had yet to be signed onto the statute books. Either way, the damage caused by the government's failure to heed their demands would not vanish, they said.
"This will leave deep scars," Jean-Claude Mailly, leader of the Force Ouvriere union, told France 2 TV, while acknowledging that the protest movement was showing "a little fatigue".
"No law can decree an end to the union struggle," Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT union, told Europe 1 radio.
Yesterday marked the seventh day of protests called by the unions over the plans to make people work two years longer for a pension, all but one of them since September.
Majority support
As the rallies kicked off in cities such as Marseille, before one in Paris in the afternoon, a CSA opinion survey showed the protests still enjoyed the support of about two-thirds of French people.
A separate, month-old strike at the port of Fos-Lavera near the southern city of Marseille may now become the government's main focus, as it is starving many French refineries of crude oil even after workers at several of them voted to resume work after weeks of strikes.
Jean-Louis Schilansky, head of the oil industry federation, said about one in five of the country's 12,500 service stations was still reporting supply difficulties, but he added: "We are on the final stretch of this conflict".
Sarkozy said the legislation to raise the minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67 was vital to rein in a ballooning pension shortfall and safeguard the AAA credit rating that let France service its debt at the lowest market rates.
