PARIS -- As France's national transit strike enters its eighth day, the standoff is shaping up as a contest over whom French people detest more: their new president or the entrenched labor unions that have ground the country to a near halt.
Railway, bus and metro workers are protesting a government plan to curtail special pension benefits that allow them to retire at ages from 50 to 55 rather than the minimum cutoff of 60 that applies to most other French people. Although some workers have resumed duties, key train and metro lines weren't running yesterday.
As people stayed home or walked, drove or cycled to work, and as the strikes were expected to last several more days, President Nicolas Sarkozy said he wouldn't back down.
"France needs reforms to meet the challenges imposed on it by the world," he said in a televised address to a group of French mayors. To sweeten the medicine, Mr. Sarkozy promised a series of measures centered on "spending power, economic growth and work."
Analysts said Mr. Sarkozy may propose cuts in labor taxes to boost the dented morale of consumers. "He is playing public opinion against the transport workers who prevent the population from going to work," said Maryse Pogodzinski, an economist with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Both sides are at a crossroad. For Mr. Sarkozy, whose plans for sweeping economic changes look less palatable than originally thought, winning the transit-strike tussle is crucial to making progress on the rest of his economic agenda. Mr. Sarkozy, won office in May with a promise he would jolt France's sluggish economy into action through tax cuts, changes in labor law and other measures aimed at making companies more competitive. He has the political legitimacy to push for the changes; he won the vote with a clear lead, and his ruling UMP party holds a strong majority in Parliament.
So far, tax cuts and other noneconomic bills Mr. Sarkozy has pushed through Parliament haven't raised much opposition among the population. Yet the proposed pension change is a litmus test for Mr. Sarkozy because, for the first time, he is hoping to extract concessions from a specific category of workers. When Mr. Sarkozy's immediate predecessor, Jacques Chirac, sought the same pension change in 1995, unions paralyzed the country for three weeks and Mr. Chirac backed down.
For the unions, this strike is part of a quest for survival. State-run transport operators that handle the rail, bus and metro systems across the country represent centers of power for the Confédération Générale du Travail union, or CGT, and other national, multisector labor unions. If unions back down on these pension changes, officials say, their clout with Mr. Sarkozy's administration could be compromised.
"We cannot give in easily because, otherwise, Mr. Sarkozy will have a free hand to do what he wants," Alain Guinot, a national delegate with the CGT, said in a recent interview.
Union officials also say that while their top brass might be interested in a compromise with Mr. Sarkozy, their workers are pushing them to stick to their hard-line approach.
Faced with chronic deficits of the nationwide pension system, the government would like to increase workers' retirement age, which currently stands at 60 for people who have worked 40 years. Before going ahead with its plans, however, the government wants to bring all the special retirement plans in line with the general 60-year-old retirement-age system. Railway workers, for example, would no longer be allowed to retire at 55.
The so-called special pension regimes of transport workers date to the middle of the 19th century, when train companies were struggling to lure skilled workers for their new business of driving steam locomotives. Other workers who have lower retirement ages for pension benefits include soldiers, coal miners and land-registry clerks.
Ballerinas can retire as early as 40, thanks to a legacy of perks granted by Louis XIV to members of his Academy of Dance in 1698. Performers and staff of the Paris Opera are among the workers who have been striking over the past week, forcing cancellations of several performances. Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca" in Paris was expected to take place last night with no set.
French National Transit Strike Enters 8th Day
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Originally Posted by Fragony
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