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French Unions Protest Sarkozy Reforms for Fourth Day |
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Written by News Editor
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Saturday, 17 November 2007 |
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Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- French public transport workers entered a fourth day of strikes in opposition to President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to roll back their pension privileges.
The biggest transport unions threatened to maintain their disruption to trains, metros and buses throughout the weekend and into next week.
They're protesting plans to bring state benefits for transport employees into line with the rest of the country by ensuring they work 40 years instead of 37.5 before getting a full pension. The Confederation Generale du Travail, UNSA and Sud, the three biggest rail unions, said they may extend the protest to Nov. 20 when teachers, doctors and other civil servants plan strikes and demonstrations against Sarkozy's plans to cut the workforce and base wages on merit.
Sarkozy has asked Labor Minister Xavier Bertrand to ``continue the efforts to negotiate'' with transport unions, though to ``respect the principle of harmonizing the pension regimes,'' presidential spokesman David Martinon told reporters yesterday, according to i-Tele.
Bertrand has agreed to union requests for a government representative to be involved in negotiations with management. He sent a letter to union officials on Nov. 14, offering one month of talks before Sarkozy's plan is enacted.
The three unions say they won't begin negotiating until Sarkozy drops his alignment plan.
Transport workers are among 500,000 state employees who escaped the first round of pension changes for the 5 million people employed by the public-sector in 2003.
Disruptions are less severe than in previous days, rail operator SNCF and Paris transport service RATP said in statements.
CFDT, the fourth largest union at SNCF and the third-largest at RATP, broke ranks with larger unions and called on its members to start working again.
``Many railway workers want the negotiations to start,'' CFDT's secretary general for rail workers Arnaud Morvan told France Info radio yesterday. |
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