Protesters poised for fresh jobs action
French protesters are aiming to rally at least a million people for nationwide marches and strikes today against an employment law that has plunged the country into crisis.
The new demonstrations follow student and union rejection of President Jacques Chirac’s bid to soften the blow of a jobs law that would make it easier to sack young workers.
“We are on the edge of victory,” said Bruno Julliard, head of a leading students’ union, on France Inter radio yesterday.
Embattled prime minister Dominique de Villepin convened his government yesterday to consider France’s stagnant job market and soaring youth unemployment. Villepin, who devised the law and has been devastated by the fury against it, sought to show that he was still in charge of a government increasingly threatened with fracture over the measure.
The head of the CGT union, Bernard Thibault, said on RMC radio that he hoped for “the strongest possible” turnout today. Unions expect the protests to match a similar action last week that brought at least a million people on the streets.
Paris is deploying about 4,000 police to keep order during the protest in the capital, one of about 150 planned around the country. Other recent demonstrations over the law have turned violent.
Yesterday, protesters disrupted air, train and car traffic. Flights in and out of Paris’ Orly airport were delayed as the civil aviation authority prepared for today’s disruptions. Students blocked major roads near Paris and Lyon, in the south east, snarling traffic for several miles. Protesters also blocked rail traffic in Rouen in the north west.
A handful of members of the Green Party staged a sit-in yesterday at the Sorbonne university, which has been shuttered for weeks.
The uproar is over a “first job contract”, which Villepin championed as a way to boost hiring of young people by easing the rules for sacking workers under 26 in their first two years on a job. Proponents say it will help push France into the global economy; opponents say it will erode the country’s hallmark worker protections.
Chirac signed the law on Sunday – but urged that it not be applied until a new, softer version was devised with two key modifications that took opponents’ concerns into account.
At a meeting with Villepin and other top officials, Chirac called for full co-operation between top politicians from the ruling conservative party and the Cabinet over the changes, the presidential palace said.
But protesters said modifying the law was not enough.
Thibault and Julliard said talks were possible between unions and student groups and politicians from the ruling UMP party – but repeated their insistence that the contract be repealed.
Villepin was visibly subdued at yesterday’s government meeting, his rhetoric toned down – while his chief rival, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy, emerged buoyant.
The prime minister admitted that the government needed to better explain its work to the French public – an apparent reference to his failure to consult with unions and student groups before introducing the jobs law. That failure, and his haste to push the law through parliament, fuelled anger over the measure.
Sarkozy, who has offered to broker talks with unions and has distanced himself from the unpopular law, is the only government official to come out on top in the crisis. Sarkozy, a top presidential hopeful for next year’s elections, hosted a UMP party meeting yesterday.
