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French unions in new set of strikes
[Al Jazeera] French trade unions have launched another set of strikes in protest over an unpopular pension reform, with workers staging a 24-hour walkout.Police said 65,000 people had taken to the streets in Paris, the capital, while organisers put the figure at 300,000. Unions were hoping for an even bigger turnout than protests earlier this month, which saw between one and three million people taking to the streets. Demonstrators are hoping to pressure Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to overturn plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.
Up to 50 per cent of flights were cancelled at airports in the capital and other cities, airport authorities said on Thursday morning. But Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Paris, said the protests had not brought the capital to a complete standstill. "Buses have been operating, the underground system has been operating although there have been slightly larger gaps between the trains than normal." She added that despite unions claiming Thursday's protests would be "massive", the turnout appeared lower than on previous occasions. "One gets perhaps a sense that people are beginning to suffer from strike fatigue. This is the fifth strike in six months, in fact the second in two weeks and of course every time a worker goes on strike they lose a day's pay," she said.
Francois Chereque, the head of the CFDT union, said earlier on Thursday that protester numbers would be "massive". "We'll see if there are more people. But in the greater Paris region, for instance, more coaches have been hired to come to demonstrate in central Paris. "The number of demonstrators today will determine what the movement does next," he told RMC radio. More than 231 separate demonstrations are expected to be held nationwide. Posted by: Fred 2010-09-24 |
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