More than 1 million French workers took to the streets on Thursday to voice anger and fear of job losses during a one-day strike over French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis.
Billed as a “Black Thursday,” the nationwide day of action caused less transport disruption than expected but the strike was well supported, with a quarter of France’s 5 million public sector workers downing tools.
The demonstrations were the biggest since the right-wing president took office in May 2007, and came amid mounting public anger at his policies, in particular his plans to cut public sector jobs.
PHOTO: AFP
Marchers thronged the boulevards of eastern Paris — organizers said 300,000, police said 65,000 — to demand protection for jobs threatened by the global slowdown.
“It’s not up to workers to pay for the bankers,” one banner read. “The bosses caused the crisis, let them pay for it!” said another, while a third read: “Hands off our public services!”
Protesters marched peacefully from the Place de la Bastille in the east of the city to the Place de l’Opera in the west, where skirmishes erupted between dozens of bottle-throwing youths and police.
Officers repeatedly baton-charged a group of young men who tried to peel away from the demonstration and march towards Sarkozy’s official residence, the Elysee Palace, burning dustbins and smashing street furniture.
The demonstrators were tear-gassed and pushed back into streets lined with cinemas and restaurants, where they attempted to set up a road-block of burning bins and overturned at least one car and set it alight.
There were no reports of serious injuries, but several arrests were made.
Fearing for their jobs in a crisis they blame on bankers and free market failures, French workers are demanding state action against lay-offs, a boost to low wages and an end to public sector cutbacks.
The CGT trade union claimed that the demonstrations had attracted more than 2.5 million protesters in towns and cities across France, while the interior ministry estimated the total number at 1.08 million.
“Sarkozy is handing out big checks to business, but he’s doing nothing for the workers,” said Mickael Sechet, a 33-year-old factory foreman marching in the Breton city of Rennes.
“We’ve had a revolution in France before. If we need to, we’ll have one again,” he said. “Given the number of people in the street, he’s going to have to start listening before things get nasty.”
Opposition leader Martine Aubry, whose Socialist Party is seeking to harness mounting anger at Sarkozy’s policies, cheered on the Paris demo.
“Today, we have a president who is pushing blindly ahead even after he took us into recession through his policies even before the financial crisis began,” she told TV cameras.
Sarkozy, while he showed no sign of bending on the content of his program, admitted that workers were right to be worried about the crisis and promised to meet union leaders next month to discuss a timetable for reform.
“This crisis of an unprecedented scale which is affecting the global economy has provoked in France, as it has elsewhere in the world, legitimate concern,” the president said in a statement. “This crisis imposes on the public authorities a duty to listen and to talk, but also a great determination to act.”
Polls show public support for the protests is high and officials said around a third of teachers, telecoms and electricity workers, a quarter of postal workers and 15 percent of air traffic controllers were on strike.
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