Minister pelted with eggs as strikes wane

CGT union angry over planned labor reform law

PARIS, June 6, (RTRS): France’s economy minister was pelted with eggs on Monday as a strike against planned labour reforms disrupted rail services for a sixth day but appeared to be running out of steam.

Industrial action in the oil sector was also waning. Oil group Total SA said two of its five refineries in northern France - Grandpuits and Normandy - were being prepared for restart after days at a standstill.

Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron was splattered on the head when militants of the hardline CGT trade union cornered him in the Paris suburb of Montreuil, where he was launching a stamp to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the “Popular Front” government that gave French workers new rights.

Macron, who advocates economic reforms to loosen rigid labour market rules and promote flexibility and competition, has become a bogeyman for traditional leftists.

“It’s par for the course but it won’t have any impact on my determination,” Macron told reporters after the attack, saying there was no economic future for those who resisted change.

Participation in action against the labour reform is dwindling with just 8.5 percent of rail workers still on strike, the SNCF state railway said before crucial negotiations between management and unions over a reorganisation of working time.

Rail connections remained seriously disrupted, however, as the company worked to secure a truce before the Euro 2016 soccer tournament kicks off in France on Friday. About 60 percent of highspeed TGV and regional trains but only one-third of slower inter-city services were running.

Socialist President Francois Hollande, piling pressure on the CGT, said on Sunday it would be incomprehensible if rail and airline strikes prevented fans from travelling to matches during the monthlong championship.

The strike is costing the rail company close to 20 million euros ($22.70 million) a day in ticket exchanges, reimbursements and lost freight business, an SNCF source said.

Negotiators worked to clinch a deal by an end of Monday deadline after the government intervened last week pledging to safeguard rest periods and help the SNCF with its debt of 50 billion euros before passenger services open to private competition in 2020.

Their task is complicated by the fact that the communist-founded CGT union, along with smaller labour unions such as Force Ouvriere, is also on the warpath over the labour reform that would make hiring and firing easier and give precedence to deals on pay and conditions negotiated at company level.

Force Ouvriere union leader Jean-Claude Mailly showed no sign of being ready to call off the industrial action.

“We’re not stupid. Nobody’s saying ‘we’re going to block the Euros’ ... but when your back is against the wall, there’s little alternative but to continue,” Mailly told LCI TV.

A BVA poll published at the weekend showed that 54 percent of French people interviewed were against the protests.

Air France pilots, in an internal conflict within the airline, are threatening to start a four-day strike on June 11, when the Euros are in full swing, and a major protest is planned in Paris on June 14.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Saturday urged strikers to show solidarity with the beleaguered public.

“This strike is already incomprehensible, but in the regions affected (by floods), it is completely incomprehensible,” he said on a visit to the flooded central town of Crosne.

Hollande is battling with record unpopularity for a modern French leader.

But a new opinion poll, released by the survey firm BVA on Sunday, found a swing in public mood against the strike.

Whereas 54 percent of those questioned previously said they backed the stoppages, 54 percent were now against, it said.

In central, eastern and northwestern France and in Paris, meanwhile, many people kept a close eye on the skies on Sunday, fearful of more of the rain that has fuelled destructive floods.

Four people were killed in France and 14 others elsewhere in Europe, 11 of them in the German states of Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Residents in flood-hit regions to the east and south of Paris picked through devastated homes, with insurers estimating damages nationwide of between 600 million euros ($681 million) and two billion euros.

A total of 7,800 homes, out of 25,000 initially affected, were without power, the electricity grid manager Enedis said.