An increasingly embarrassed government faces mass revolt, and possible court proceedings, over a law passed last June that aims to fund better care for the aged and disabled by asking the nation to go to work on Whit Monday. 

"The law must be applied by everyone," the centre-right prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said this week. "That is the practice of our republic. Those who work one extra day in the year are contributing, without actually paying any money, to a great cause." 
The law followed an appeal to France's "fraternity and responsibility" by Mr Raffarin after the two-week heat wave, which killed more than 15,000 people. The extra €2bn (£1.4bn) in social security contributions and taxes raised by the May 16 National Solidarity Day is to go to a new fund for the vulnerable. 

The plan to give up one of France's 13 bank holidays was at first greeted with widespread approval. Ernest-Antoine Seilliere of the French employers' federation, hailed "a great novelty in France - the belief that problems can be solved by working harder". 

But the enthusiasm has worn off. CFTC, the trade union federation, said the project amounted to "forced labour" and contravened the European convention on human rights. It has called for it to be scrapped and said it would take the matter to the European court. 
Several other unions have called strikes for May 16, and a number of Socialist-led regional and city councils are maintaining May 16 as a bank holiday, prompting one cabinet minister to criticise the "egocentricity" of those who "are all for solidarity in theory, but when it comes down to it don't want to know". 

Paris metro staff and post office workers will be at work, but negotiations are still going on at the gas and electricity boards. And the state railway SNCF has decreed that May 16 will be a holiday. But staff will have an extra minute and 52 seconds added to every working day to compensate. 

Staff at Shell, BASF and France's largest commercial TV station, TF1, will take Whit Monday off, but the companies will contribute to the fund as if they had been at work.