[Onthebarricades] FRANCE: Mass strike wave, sabotage hit Sarkozy regime

Wed Nov 21 14:27:29 PST 2007

A series of sabotage incidents have compounded disruption caused by a massive week-long rail strike in France against the Sarkozy regime.  Sarkozy has no response but to make vicious and vindictive threats against his opponents.  The statists are refusing to compromise and hence making it difficult for union leaders to defuse unrest.  This is the kind of hard-right regime which can only be affected by force.

Sarkozy is also being hit with strikes and occupations at colleges, and even an occupation by lawyers.

This is basically a trial of strength - the tyrant against the people.  With luck this will be the beginning of the end for quasi-fascist scumbag Sarkozy who wants to destroy French social movements like Thatcher did in Britain.  

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7106419.stm

      Last Updated: Wednesday, 21 November 2007, 20:03 GMT  

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      Sarkozy vows to punish saboteurs  

      The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has called for those who sabotaged his country's high-speed TGV rail network to be punished with "extreme severity". 
      Mr Sarkozy asked the justice minister to carry out all necessary inquiries into what the state rail operator, SNCF, called a "concerted campaign". 

      Arsonists burnt tracks and signals, causing delays to services already hit by an eighth day of transport strikes. 

      Earlier, talks were held to try to end the dispute over economic reforms. 

      Managers from SNCF and the Paris public transport operator, RATP, held lengthy meetings with union and government representatives in the capital to try to reach a compromise. 

      Map: France's TGV network 
      There has been no word of a breakthrough, however, and workers are due to vote on Thursday on whether to continue a strike which the government says is costing France millions of euros a day. 

      The government has vowed not to back down on its core proposal to reform the "special" pension system. 

      'Big mistake' 

      In a statement issued on Wednesday morning, the SNCF said there had been "several acts" occurring "at the same time" overnight on lines running north, west, east and south-east out of Paris. 

      It said they included a "very large" fire on the TGV's Atlantic branch that damaged signals affecting 30km (18 miles) of track. 

      At a cabinet meeting, President Sarkozy asked the police to "make sure the perpetrators were punished with the most extreme severity", the secretary of state in charge of transport, Dominique Bussereau, told France 2 TV. 

      Prime Minister Francois Fillon later blamed militant unionists for the "criminal acts". 

      "The matter has been referred to the judicial authorities. Inquiries are under way, and penalties will be very severe," he told reporters. 

      Mr Fillon said the perpetrators of the sabotage had "no doubt" thought they could interrupt negotiations and the resumption of rail services by the SNCF, which he said was "under way". 

      "Well, let me tell them that they have made a big mistake because, on the contrary, this irresponsible strategy makes negotiations and an end to the strike, which is under way, even more necessary," he added. 

      The prime minister finished by saying it was "high time for these strikes to stop" and for transport networks to resume. 

      Union officials also deplored the attacks as acts of vandalism by "cowards", warning that they put people's safety at risk. 

      Bernard Thibault, chief of the powerful CGT railway union, suggested the acts could have been aimed to discredit the strike movement. 

      'Pyromaniac government' 

      The unions later held three-way talks with the management of the SNCF and RATP and government representatives in Paris. 

      After the meeting, the head of the CGT's branch at the RATP, Gerard Leboeuf, called on transport workers to "take account of public opinion and preserve their forces to have a bearing on the talks if necessary". 

      Nevertheless, Mr Leboeuf said union leaders would not call for an end to the strike, saying workers would be allowed to vote on whether to continue on Thursday. 

      "We're not going to play the role of fire fighters for this pyromaniac government and it's the workers themselves who are going to decide the next step," he added. 

      The next round of talks with the RATP is scheduled for Monday. 

      President Sarkozy has urged protesters to go back to work, saying the strike had "already cost users - and strikers - so dear". 

      The government has said there could be incentives of salary rises and a top-up scheme for pensions. 

      But it has stressed that there will be no budging on the core issue of eliminating special pensions which allow 500,000 transport and utility workers to retire early. 

      Didier Le Rester of France's General Labour Confederation has predicted that the negotiations could last up to a month. 

      Commuter havoc 

      Before the latest incidents, the SNCF had estimated there would be slightly improved rail services on Wednesday as the number of strikers steadily declined. 

      The SNCF claimed that only 22.8% of its staff remained on strike, while the RATP said 16.4% were still refusing to work. 

      The week of strikes has caused havoc for millions of commuters across France. 

      Businesses have started complaining that the strikes are hurting their operations. 

      The president of the Medef employers' association has described the strike as a "catastrophe" of "probably gigantic" cost to the economy. 

      Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has meanwhile said the dispute is costing France up to 400m euros (£290m) a day in lost business. 

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7102840.stm

            Last Updated: Monday, 19 November 2007, 22:56 GMT  

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            Strike fever spreading in France  
                  By Alasdair Sandford 
                  BBC News, Paris  

            As happens from time to time in France, militancy is in the air again. 

            The resolve of the railway workers - on strike for almost a week now - seems to have encouraged others to stick up for their rights too. 

            Lessons at a lycee in Lille were suspended after students blocked access to the secondary school in protest at university reforms. 

            In Vannes several dozen lawyers angry at an overhaul of the court system had to be forcibly moved by police from a courtroom they had occupied. 

            And a publishing union announced that Tuesday's newspapers would not appear in the stands because of a dispute over distribution. 

            The state railway company, SNCF, condemned several new "acts of ill-will" by staff on strike in several stations. 

            Ballast had been dumped on points, signals interfered with and keys stolen to prevent trains from departing. 

            In one incident, several carriages disappeared from their depots overnight and were found blocking a track nearby. 

            Familiar pattern 

            The rail dispute itself has begun to follow something of a familiar pattern. 

            No sooner do the government, the railway companies and union leaders announce that talks are on the horizon than grassroots members immediately vote in waves for the strike to continue the following day. 

            At local meetings around the country on Monday, the results were overwhelmingly in favour - 181 out of 187 workers in Marseille vowed to stay out, as did 97 out of 102 at Bordeaux. 

            In Strasbourg only five voted against the strike, from 250 workers present. 

            At the same time, the proportion of rail staff actually on strike has continued to fall steadily, according to the rail companies. 

            On Monday only 26% of the national rail workforce was said to be still out, along with only 18% of staff on the Paris metro. Yet among train drivers, the figures have reflected the opposite, which may explain why many services have barely improved since day one. 

            So, while a sea of Parisian commuters queued for half an hour to reach the platform of the only metro line that was running properly, some were asking why talks had to wait until Wednesday. 

            Six unions have agreed to sit at a "tripartite round table" with government and railway officials, who will be there as long as rather more trains are running than have been until now. 

            Walking the tightrope 

            France's Labour Minister, Xavier Bertrand - who has been tipped as a possible future prime minister - has refused to bend on the principle that the "special regimes" enjoyed by rail and power workers must be brought into line with other pensions in the public sector. 

            But a compensation package is said to have been drawn up as a sweetener, amounting to perhaps 90 million euros a year according to Le Monde newspaper. 

            The plethora of unions involved - with the grassroots and rail sections often at odds with the national leadership - has confused the picture. 

            In the forefront, the CGT leader Bernard Thibault has been walking something of a tightrope, offering olive branches to the government while trying not to alienate his more militant members. 

            All sides know that many striking rail workers have had their eyes fixed on what has been called "Black Tuesday", when many of those who have been struggling to get to work over the past week will themselves be going on strike. 

            Hundreds of thousands - possibly millions - of teachers, civil servants, health workers, students, banking staff, air traffic controllers, customs officials, weather forecasters, and others - will stop work for 24 hours for a variety of reasons: from pay to public sector reform. 

            While some unions have wanted to keep the disputes separate, others have been pushing for a "junction" of the two protest movements under a common theme of the high cost of living. 

            The high stakes have led to a strange phenomenon: a largely silent president. 

            The usually omnipresent Nicolas Sarkozy has let his ministers do the talking for the past week. 

            He is expected to intervene before too long, however, with some major announcements on boosting wages, one of his main election themes. 

            The president may feel he needs to grab the reins publicly again: at least two opinion polls in recent days suggested that his rating had dropped five points in a month. 

            In the words of one newspaper, the honeymoon period is over. 

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