Protests over French labor overhaul grip Paris, other cities
The Eiffel Tower saw service cutbacks, angry carnival workers snarled traffic around the Arc de Triomphe and police used water cannons and tear gas as unions held protests in Paris and elsewhere Tuesday against planned changes to French labor laws.
The day of protests was the first collective outcry against President Emmanuel Macron’s bid to power the economy and boost jobs by tackling France’s rigid labor rules to make it easier to hire and fire workers.
The hard-line CGT union called for strikes and organized some 180 marches against the changes, unveiled last month by Macron’s government.
Union leader Philippe Martinez told the crowd in Paris that reforming labor rules was a futile effort to create jobs.
“No reform which has destroyed the labor law ... has reversed the unemployment trend,” Martinez said at the Place de la Bastille, the starting point of the Paris march.
Such reforms don’t lead to “a job with which one can build his life on,” he said.
The union said 60,000 people participated in the Paris protest. Police said that 24,000 people marched and some 300 black-clad and hooded youths who joined late in the day pelted security forces with objects, briefly halting the event.
Officers responded with tear gas and water cannons. A police statement said four people were detained and one person with a minor injury was taken to a hospital. Macron was elected in May amid enthusiasm over his promises of revving up France’s economy. He now is foundering in public opinion polls amid anger over the labor decrees and other domestic troubles.
Protesters said the reforms will give employers new powers to dismiss them, bypass trade unions and reduce their ability to defend their rights. “There will be more short-term employment contracts, more job mobility imposed on employees and more job insecurity,” said Nathalie Cornu, 50, a secretary with the France’s Social Security administration.
The Eiffel Tower was affected by scattered strikes, with late-afternoon viewing limited to the first floor. Visitors had to access the viewing area through a stairway because elevators weren’t running.
Horn-tooting fair workers held a separate protest movement Tuesday against legal changes they say favor big corporations and could wipe out their centuries-old family-based livelihoods.
Dozens of big rigs drove at a snail’s pace around the Arc de Triomphe, causing rush-hour traffic snarls as protesters danced and waved flags on a flat-bed truck with a severed plastic head from a fair ride.