Country-wide job loss strike paralyses France

In a second round of protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy's economic policies, over a million French workers stopped work yesterday in all the major cities of France and took to the streets in protest.

The largest unions, the General Confederation of Labour estimated 2.6 million people from the public and private sectors took part in the protest in major cities of France against the government's inability to contain job losses and unjust economic policies, the biggest street protest since Sarkozy took office in May 2007.

This was the second major protest following the first on 29 January when an estimated 2.5 million took to the streets as 90,000 jobs were lost in the month.

The protesters had then demanded that the government should raise unemployment benefits, raise wages of workers in the low-end category and bring in new laws to make it more difficult for companies to retrench during the economic crisis.

In response, the Sarkozy's government announced welfare payments and tax cuts worth $3.5 billion (€2.6 billion), which included extended unemployment benefits, tax breaks for the poor and a one-time payment of $650 to those unemployed who did not qualify for unemployment checks.

With unions rubbishing the welfare payments as woefully inadequate, the unions again mobilised demonstrations across France yesterday, where workers at the country's train network, airports and utilities stopped work and schools were closed but public transport in Paris was reportedly normal.

The largest unions said that Sarkozy's aid was insufficient while banks and rich businessmen were given a majority of the $35 billion stimulus plan announced by the government in December.

Sarkozy had stood his ground and said that he would not go further than the what he has already announced while Prime Minister François Fillon acknowledged in a television appearance after the first protests, that the workers concerns were real but said that problems generated by the global economic crisis was not restricted to France. He said it would be irresponsible for the government to spend more.

Although the number of unemployed is about 2.2 million, the economic crisis in France is not as bad as in the UK, Spain or Ireland but French workers, fearing more job cuts, are frustrated and want the government to do more than what is already done, said a company executive.

Early this month, the French government forecast that the global crisis would consume a further 350,000 jobs in the private and the economy would contract by up to 2per cent.

To make matters worse for the Sarkozy government, after recording record profits of $18 billion in 2008, French oil giant Total announced 550 job cuts in France on 10 March.

Last week the head and the human resources manager of Sony France were held hostage for 18 hours after they arrived at the company's factory in Pontonx-sur-L'Adour to tell the 311 workers that all of them would be laid off since the company was closing the factory on 17 April.

Workers at a Continental tyre plant in northern France hurled eggs at managers last week when the company announced the loss of 1,200 jobs due to closing down of the factory.
Bernard Thibault, secretary of the Confederation Generale du Travail, one of the nation's largest unions was reported by a French radio station as saying "salaried workers won't any longer accept being the victims of this crisis, which they had nothing to do with."

Although the police put the number of protestors yesterday at 1.2 million, the protest showed that a large number of the French public supported the strike with one poll indicating that 78 per cent of the French fully supported the strikers.