France on edge as union protests cut fuel supplies
Police have clashed with union members as deepening fuel shortages push France towards economic standstill and a political crisis that threatens to topple the government.
Riot squads used tear gas and water cannon to lift blockades around a refinery in southern France yesterday, in an effort to restore supplies disrupted by protests over President Francois Hollande’s attempt to loosen the country’s labour laws.
The police action did little, however, to restore calm to a fraught nation that has seen the closure of at least a quarter of its 12,000 petrol stations, with some frustrated motorists attacking employees at the pumps.
Hollande is under pressure to scrap the labour reforms. A U-turn would almost certainly result in the resignation of Manuel Valls, the tough-talking reformist prime minister who has staked his job upon his ability to face down the French Left.
The bill was initially designed to promote growth and employment by encouraging staff to work longer hours and by facilitating layoffs – the idea being that businesses would hire employees in a boom if they knew they could more easily dismiss them in a bust.
Hollande thought that the plan would salvage his presidency. Instead, it has turned into his latest, perhaps greatest, fiasco. He has watered down the reforms so much that employers now oppose then, but this has done nothing to appease unions, anarchists and dissident members of his Socialist Party.
The protest movement is widespread and diverse, with tertiary and secondary students staging violent demonstrations, and air traffic controllers, railway workers, train drivers and post office staff holding one-day strikes.
It is the action by oil refinery workers, however, that is of most concern to ministers.
As pumps run dry across the country, some petrol station staff have been placed under police protection. A petrol station manager in Brittany was hit on the head with a baseball bat by an angry driver.
Despite the chaos, polls suggest that a majority of French people back the protest against the labour law reforms.
Michel Caparros, 36, a builder in Mormant, a town south of Paris, said a colleague had given him a lift to work because his car had run out of fuel and all the petrol stations nearby were empty.
‘‘My wife is a nurse and needs her car to get to work, but she is about to run out, too,’’ he said.
‘‘This protest movement is a pain for us but we totally agree with it. If the law goes through, we won’t have any rights and the bosses will be able to do as they like.’’
Just a few kilometres away, the refinery in Grandpuits-BaillyCarrois became the sixth to shut down. Hours later, the two remaining plants followed suit after staff voted in favour of a total strike.
The refinery serves the Paris region. Gregory Pouvesle, the Force Ouvriere union delegate, said: ‘‘The government hasn’t listened to us and it hasn’t listened to the French people, so we have decided to do what is necessary to stop the economy. This is not going to be a small strike. We’re going to carry on until Mr Valls sees sense.’’
Pouvesle said the reforms might seem ‘‘modest’’ to other Europeans, who enjoy far less workplace protection, but ‘‘they are trying to undo everything that generations of workers in France have fought to achieve’’.
He is particularly angry at a clause that opens the prospect of overtime paid at 10 per cent more than the standard hourly rate, compared to 25 or 50 per cent more at present.
Ministers say this is necessary to improve productivity, given that France has the shortest statutory working week in Europe – 35 hours – and some of the highest labour costs.