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French protests intensify, government stands firm

18 October 2010 23:35 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. French truck drivers staged go-slow operations on highways, rail strikes intensified and petrol stations ran out of fuel on Monday as protests gathered pace ahead of a Senate vote on an unpopular pension overhaul, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The government, which has stood firm on President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to raise the retirement age through months of protests, assured the public infrastructure would not freeze up despite a week-long strike at refineries that dried up supplies at hundreds of the roughly 12,500 petrol stations nationwide.
"The situation is critical," a spokeswoman at Exxon Mobil said. "Anyone looking for diesel in the Paris and Nantes (Western France) regions will have problems," she said.
Strike action was ramping up ahead of a nationwide march on Tuesday and with a final Senate vote on the pension bill set for Wednesday it was looking like a make-or-break week for Sarkozy.
Workers at France’s 12 refineries were in their seventh day of a strike on Monday and protesters were blocking access many fuel distribution depots around the country.
The UFIP oil industry lobby has said France could see serious fuel supply problems by mid-week, meaning the government may have to tap emergency reserves. The DGAC aviation authority urged airlines to reduce flights to Paris’s Orly airport by 50 percent and to all other airports by 30 percent on Tuesday.
The CGT union said it was calling on workers to protest at airports nationwide on Wednesday as well. The union, the largest at Air France, said the protests would not necessarily involve blocking airport access but that it was an option.
Tuesday will be the sixth day of major weekday protests and work stoppages called by national labor union confederations since June but the unrest has intensified since last week when unions at railways and refineries began open-ended industrial action, joined now by truck drivers and delivery workers.
GOVERNMENT REASSURES, FUEL STATIONS DISRUPTED
Government ministers stressed the country had plenty of fuel and that airports in particular have ample supply.
"The government is in control," Industry Minister Christian Estrosi told RTL radio. "There will be no blockade for companies, no blockade for transport and no blockade for road users."
France’s supermarket chains account for about 60 percent of car fuel sales and an industry association representing the bulk of those outlets said between 500 and 1,000 stations were either empty, out of one fuel or other, or seeking fresh supplies.
At an empty service station on Paris’ Champs Elysees avenue, manager Paula said she spent much of Monday morning trying to stop motorists unhooking the fuel pumps.
"It’s madness, we’re submerged," she said.
The International Energy Agency, which overlooks strategic oil supplies in OECD countries, said France had some 98 days of fuel stocks between industry reserves and government reserves and that the country had started to tap the industry stocks.
A majority of French people -- 71 percent in one poll -- back protests against the plan to raise the minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67 respectively, a measure the government says is the only way to stem a ballooning pension deficit.
Jerome Sainte-Marie of the CSA polling agency said the scale of opposition showed the price the government would pay if it stays the course, but noted the next presidential and legislative elections are more than a year away.
"It’s not certain this political cost will last until 2012," he told Le Parisien daily.
The bill’s main points have passed through both houses of parliament. The Senate is now voting on the entire package, which the lower house has already approved.
Analysts are anticipating a yes vote in the Senate after which the next stage -- a joint vote by a committee representing both houses of parliament -- will be little more than a formality. The government wants that to happen by end-October.
Truck drivers used vans from Sunday evening to slow traffic on motorways around Paris and cities like Lille, Rennes and Lyon, but were not using fleets of large trucks to block roads.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon has warned that people blocking fuel depots are breaking the law.
"The right to strike is not the right to bar access to a fuel depot, that’s an illegal action," he said on Sunday. "I will not let the French economy suffocate from a blockage of fuel supply."
TV stations broadcast footage of workers at the Grandpuits refinery saying they had been "requisitioned" under government orders to go to work or risk jail but that they could not work because co-workers had formed human chains at the site.
The government did not explicitly threaten police action on Monday but police did intervene late last week to lift blockades at some depots and union officials are wary of further similar steps.
Two cars were burned, a van overturned and a bus shelter smashed up in a disturbance in the Paris suburb of Nanterre that a bystander said was related to pension protests. Secondary school students were planning a rally at the Champs Elysees later in the day.
Sarkozy will be busy on Monday holding talks with his German and Russian counterparts Angela Merkel and Dmitry Medvedev at the seaside town of Deauville. The talks wrap up on Tuesday.