French demand protection from crisis

PARIS – More than a million French public sector workers staged a massive strike yesterday, as anger at President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis erupted in a day of protest.

Billed as a ‘Black Thursday,’ the day of action failed to halt the Paris transport network, but support for the strike was significant, with 23 per cent of France’s five million public sector workers downing tools. Private sector managers reported a much lower level of strike participation in their businesses, but said many staff had taken the day off to avoid disruption on the suburban rail network. Many in France fear for their jobs in a crisis they blame on bankers and free market failures. They are demanding protection from layoffs, a boost to low wages and an end to public sector cutbacks. Opposition Socialist Party spokesman Benoit Hamon called for Sarkozy to rethink a package of tax cuts he said would help only the rich, and instead to focus on boosting the spending power of the worst off. ‘There’s been a number of warning signs from public opinion, and it’s because he wasn’t paying attention to these signals that today we have a massive strike,’ Hamon told LCI television. Sarkozy’s government, however, showed no sign of bending. ‘We have a policy, a policy of reform, a recovery plan. The strike is not a solution to the crisis,’ Budget Minister Eric Woerth told RMC radio, defending the president’s controversial plan to trim public sector jobs. ‘Yes, there are too many government employees. Yes, yes, one departure in two will not be replaced,’ he insisted. Polls have shown that public support for the protests has remained high, and as the afternoon began thousands of marchers were gathering. Officials said more than a third of teachers, a quarter of postal, telecoms and state electricity workers and 15 percent of air traffic controllers were on strike. Public radio stations were broadcasting music on a loop and the Chateau de Versailles, one of France’s biggest tourist attractions, was closed. A third of flights out of Paris’ second airport Orly were cancelled, but remaining services from there and the larger Charles de Gaulle were delayed only by around half an hour, as much by thick fog as by the strike. Inside the city, around three-quarters of Metro trains were running on the underground network, along with 85 per cent of buses and all trams and airport shuttle services, management told AFP. Suited workers biked or skated to work to avoid the disruption, with officials reporting a 150-per cent surge in use of the city’s hugely popular cycle rental network, Velib. There was more trouble on the RER commuter rail network bringing workers into the city, with one branch line fully closed and as few as one in five trains running on others. But arriving in Paris, many commuters were unperturbed by the disruption and many expressed support for the strikers, even as they headed to work. ‘I’m tired and frozen after waiting half-an-hour on the platform, but I’m prepared to accept that when it’s a movement to defend our spending power and jobs,’ said 34-year-old secretary Sandrine Dermont. In France’s second city of Marseille the Metro was closed, but in Lille eight buses in 10 were working and in Bordeaux and Lyon trams and subways were operating at around half capacity. National and regional train services were disrupted, though not as badly as had been expected. Rail firm SNCF predicted that 60 per cent of high-speed TGV services would run, and 40 per cent of regional trains. Sarkozy came to power in May 2007 promising to raise living standards and kickstart growth, but France only narrowly averted recession last year, and the economy will probably contract in 2009 for the first time since 1993. – Nampa-AFP