The French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, faces his first big wave of unrest as an expected 1,5-million public- and private-sector workers take to the streets on Tuesday to protest at worsening social conditions and unpopular economic reforms.
The 24-hour strike is set to cause severe transport disruption, with train, bus and metro services halved in 75 towns and cities. Airports will be hit by an air traffic controllers’ strike and many schools will be shut as teachers join the campaign, backed by all five trade union federations and every leftwing party.
Post office and electricity board workers, as well as staff at large companies such as Renault, Nestlé, France Telecom and the big banks, are due to walk out for all or part of the day to attend some 150 rallies across France. In the biggest procession, a forecast 600 000 protesters will march from the Place de la République to the Bastille in central Paris.
While the centre-right government is keen to play down the scale of the protest and the depth of ill-feeling, observers say it has reason to worry. ”The movement is surfing on the nation’s anxieties, fears and pessimism, and on the growing impoverishment of the middle classes,” said one analyst, Dominique de Montvalon. ”In these conditions, anything is possible in France because everything coalesces.”
It is the first big challenge to De Villepin, whose approval rating has climbed steadily since his appointment in June, overtaking his main rival, the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, last week. ”It’s high stakes now,” De Montvalon said. ”Villepin can no longer just say he has a direction and a few results. The problems are piling up on his desk.”
The protest, as ever in France, enjoys broad public support — 74% according to a poll published on Monday — despite the transport problems many will face. Respondents’ main concerns were the health service (50%), declining spending power (34%), pensions (33%) and jobs (29%).
Job-seekers and pensioners have joined in the informal but apparently well-organised movement, formed to defend ”jobs, salaries, workers’ rights and the right to work”, and in particular to protest at a package of measures pushed through this summer in an attempt to slash France’s 10%-plus unemployment rate.
The most controversial part of the package is a ”new employee contract” or CNE, which allows employers to fire staff without justification at any time in their first two years. Praised by bosses for injecting flexibility into France’s rigid labour market, the CNE is seen by trade unionists as a first step towards an ”Anglo-Saxon” labour market with little job security.
The ire of the unions has also been aroused by plans by the US computing giant Hewlett-Packard to axe 1 250 jobs in France; the privatisation of the state electricity board EDF; the prospect of competition on the railways; poor public sector pay levels, sharply falling purchasing power for almost every French wage earner; and continued cutbacks to the prized social security system,
Employees of the state-owned Corsican ferry line SNCM, currently engaged in a violent conflict with the government over plans to sell off a majority of the heavily loss-making company, will lead some of the marches, union organisers said. The Transport Minister, Dominique Perben, and the Finance Minister, Thierry Breton, were sent to Marseille on Monday to try to end the dispute, which has blocked France’s largest port and sparked unrest in Corsica. A blockade of the island’s ports was temporarily lifted to allow thousands of tourists to leave.
The ministers said they wanted to save the ferry line, but stressed that proposals for a partial privatisation were the only way to avert its bankruptcy. Radical unionists, many with close ties to Corsica’s nationalist and separatist movement, have rejected any state sell-off. – Guardian Unlimited Â