French
Transport Crippled by Strike Over Pensions
By Mark John
Reuters, Thu April 3, 2003
PARIS (Reuters) -
French commuters walked, cycled and rollerbladed to work on Thursday as
public sector strikes against state pension reforms crippled rail and air
traffic.
National carrier Air
France said it canceled 55 percent of its domestic and European flights
but its long-haul services flew as normal. Air authorities said up to 80
percent of French air traffic would be hit in total.
Paris metro traffic
was severely disrupted and commuters faced delays of several hours. There
were skeleton services on urban and regional train routes into the French
capital.
Suburban commuter
Patrick Boudier made it as far as Saint Lazare station in central Paris
but turned back because he could not reach his office by metro.
"I called in to
the office, and they said pretty much no one had come in today," he
said. "If people protest, I think they shouldn't do it this way. If
you ask for too much, you will end up with nothing."
Eurostar services
between Paris, Brussels and London ran as scheduled in the morning. But
high-speed domestic TGV train services were badly hit, with one train in
two canceled on some routes.
Unions said teachers
and private sector employees were expected to join the day of industrial
action.
A notice pinned to
the door of a primary school in central Paris said classes could not be
guaranteed. Pavements thronged with people walking to work. Some
businessmen chose to rollerblade in their suits, clutching briefcases.
BIG FINANCING GAP
The strikes come as
the conservative government prepares to unveil plans on April 11 to
overhaul France's pay-as-you-go pension system, creaking under the weight
of an aging population.
A central
demonstration is planned later through Paris, with scores of other rallies
throughout the country.
A poll published in
Le Parisien daily showed 72 percent of French people backed the strikes.
But a similar number said they had sympathy with the government.
Similar reform plans
were abandoned by the previous conservative government after crippling
strikes in 1995, and were partly blamed for the administration's downfall
in 1997.
The last
Socialist-led government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin pledged to reform
pensions after it came to power in 1997, but it ultimately chose not to.
Thursday's strikes
are the latest popular protests against the reform, which the government
aims to pass through parliament by the summer. Two months ago, some
300,000 people took to the streets in over 100 French towns in protest at
the shake-up.
Prime Minister
Jean-Pierre Raffarin is expected to push for public sector employees, who
now contribute for 37 1/2 years to qualify for full pension rights, to be
brought in line with their private sector colleagues who pay for 40 years.
Unions suspect this
is just the first move in a wider plan to make people retire later and
push employees into supplementing state pensions with private
"top-up" schemes. Standard age of retirement is currently 60.
"The
government's logic is: make employees pay for their own pension at a time
when the demographics and the jobs market are against them," Bernard
Thibault, head of the large CGT union leading the day of protest, told
France 2 television.
Thibault said unions
accepted there was a need to cover a financing gap in the system which
some estimates put at up to 150 billion euros ($162 billion) by 2040, but
insist employees should not carry the full burden.
However the CFDT
union -- which rivals the CGT as France's largest -- is absent from
Thursday's protests. It has said it wants to hear what the government says
on April 11 first.
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