France Braces for Strikes in Unions’
Final Stand on Pension Bill
By - Oct 28, 2010 3:45 AM GMT+ bloomberg.
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France braced for train disruptions, flight cancelations and fuel shortages after unions called for a fifth, and some said final, strike today against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension bill, passed by parliament yesterday.
Unions are divided about the course of action after the lower house of parliament yesterday cast its final vote, approving the bill that will raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60. The bill must now be vetted by the constitutional court before it is promulgated into law by Sarkozy.
“Since there are no signs that Sarkozy will back down, the challenge for the unions is to find a way to wind down the protests without losing face,” said Guy Groux, an expert on labor movements at Cevipof, a Paris-based political research institute. “It’s clear the protests will peter out.”
Still, France’s largest union, Confederation Generale du Travail, said it will continue to push for concessions until the retirement plan is signed into law. “Until the law is promulgated, we’ll continue to act,”Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT union, said in an interview with newspaper Liberation yesterday. “Then we enter a different stage.”
About 30 percent of flights from Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport will be canceled today. Trains and local transport will be disrupted and some government offices will be closed. Strikes at oil terminals have left refineries without the necessary crude to process into fuels such as gasoline and diesel. Workers at power plants have threatened to cut electricity production. Demonstrations are planned in cities across the country and unions have called for another day of protests on Nov. 6
In Line
The bill, which also raises the age for a full pension by two years to 67, would bring France closer to Germany and the U.S., which are moving toward setting 67 as the full-retirement age, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
While Sarkozy wants to enact the law on Nov. 15, France’s Constitutional Court may need time to review it. The government says the changes are needed to help France cope with an aging population and balance the pension system’s budget by 2018.
The overhaul is part of the broader government struggle to cut the budget deficit. This year the gap will stand at 7.7 percent of gross domestic product, and Sarkozy’s ministers plan to narrow it to 6 percent, or 92 billion euros, next year.
The risk premium on French bonds has been falling as the protests eased. Investors demanded about 36 basis points more to buy 10-year French bonds than comparable German securities, against about 41 basis points on Oct. 12. The spreads were at 30 basis points on Sept. 6.
Ports, Planes, Trains
Five out of 11 refineries are operating in France, even though some are still idled by lack of crude, Yves le Goff, a spokesman for UFIP, a refineries industry group, said yesterday. Earlier this week, all active refineries were on strike or idle.
The Port of Marseille on the southern Mediterranean coast said 37 crude oil carriers and 20 oil-product tankers were stranded because of a weeks-long strike that is continuing. Ports of Le Havre and Antifer have 16 vessels anchored, waiting to berth, port agents Inchcape Shipping Services said in a notice on its website.
France’s Civil Aviation Authority asked airlines to reduce flights to and from Orly airport in Paris by 50 percent, and those at other airports in mainland France by 30 percent. Air France-KLMsaid it will guarantee all its long-haul flights, which cancelling some domestic and European flights.
The national railroad said four out of five high-speed trains will run, as will about three out of five regional and Paris commuter trains. That’s double the service on previous strike days. Eurostar service to London will run normally. The Paris metro hasn’t announced its traffic forecasts.
‘Union Defeat’
French power plant workers were set to begin their strike last night, which may cut production of electricity, according to a representative of the CGT union.
The protests and strikes cost the country between 200 million euros and 400 million euros ($280 million to $560 million) a day, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Oct. 25.
Workers held their first strike on Sept. 7 when the National Assembly started debating the bill. Since then strikes and demonstrations have disrupted airlines and trains and brought about a million protesters to the streets during demonstrations. Blockades at oil depots left almost half the country’s service stations with shortages of some fuel products.
Still, even before the final vote yesterday, the protests had begun to wind down as workers elected to go back to work.
“No matter how you look at it, it is a defeat for the unions,” said Groux, the labor expert. “They held numerous strikes, mobilized a lot of people, and can’t really point to any achievements.”
Unpopular Sarkozy
Francois Chereque, head of the CFDT, France’s second- largest union, has said he won’t call for protests after the pension bill becomes law. Instead, he’s agreed with the head of the country’s business lobby to open negotiations on creating more job opportunities for youths entering the labor market and for seniors at the end of their careers. Groux said other union leaders will try to find similar exits.
The CGT union said it will work more at the company level to force deals allowing for early retirement for people in hardship jobs.
Sarkozy’s two-month battle with unions and workers has hurt his popularity, which fell to a record low this month, with less than a third of those questioned approving his performance, anIfop survey for the Journal du Dimanche showed Oct. 24. His approval rating fell to 29 percent, against 32 percent in September, the lowest since his May 2007 election.
Meanwhile, protests against the bill still have widespread support, polls show. An Ifop institute poll for Ouest-France Dimanche newspaper showed that 63 percent of respondents supported the call for strikes today.
The same poll also found that 59 percent of the French say it’s unacceptable for strikers to block fuel depots or roads. The poll was conducted Oct. 21 and 22, with 956 respondents. Paris-based Ifop didn’t publish margins of error. (bloomberg)
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