News Briefs
French transit workers strike to protect pensions
Nov 1, 2007 3:45 PM
The biggest transit strike in a decade gripped France after conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy announced planned cuts in retirement benefits. The 24-hour strike curtailed almost all long-distance train service and public transit in 28 cities, including the Paris Metro. French unions threatened to extend the strike if the government failed to negotiate. A similar action by German transport workers over collective-bargaining issues brought that nation to a 24-hour standstill, too.
Sarkozy’s government wants to eliminate what it views as a costly retirement system and institute what Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand called “indispensable” reforms.
Union official Bernard Thibault told the news agency AFP that the transit workers are “fed up with being constantly portrayed as privileged or in some way guilty on the issue of pensions.”
A physical education instructor told The Washington Post that he feared that teachers’ working standards could be Sarkozy’s next target.
“This is the first strike between Sarkozy and the workers, and it won’t be the last,” he said. “There will be a lot more.”
Sarkozy, an admirer of George Bush’s economic policies who was elected in a narrow runoff against a Socialist Party rival, said he was honoring his campaign pledge, which included the injunction that the French “needed to work harder,” and he vowed to cut state payrolls and lengthen the 35-hour work week.
“People would be more worried if we didn’t carry out the reforms,” he said. “That’s what I was elected for.”
Associated Press, Oct. 18
The Washington Post, Oct. 19
