Business, government sound alarm on French strikes (fwd)

[Chegitz Guevara <mluziett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc, "the Chegitz," Luzietti
personal homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett
political homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett/chegitz.html

"Gas! GAS! Quick boys!--an ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone was still yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and the thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."

>From "Dulce Et Decorum Est," written sometime between Oct. 1917 & March
1918, by Wilfred Owen, killed in the last week of WWI.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 95 18:35:37 -0800
Subject: Business, government sound alarm on French strikes

Business, government sound alarm on French strikes
a0747LBY937reulb
r i BC-FRANCE-STRIKES   12-02 0601
^BC-FRANCE-STRIKES 2NDLD (SCHEDULED, PICTURE)@
 ^Business, government sound alarm on French strikes@
(Updates throughout)
    By Irwin Arieff
    PARIS, Dec 2 (Reuter) - Government and business leaders
warned France on Saturday that crippling strikes spreading
through the public sector would soon seriously damage the
economy.
    ``The consequences for weakened businesses in a faltering
environment could be catastrophic,'' Industry Minister Franck
Borotra said on Saturday, inviting unions to talk and warning of
job losses if strikes drag on.
    ``Fifty percent of the economic activity of small and medium
businesses in the Paris region is blocked, and this means
fragility for peoples' jobs,'' Borotra told LCI television.
    Businesses were already suffering as shipments of raw
materials and finished goods by rail were blocked. People stayed
home rather than brave traffic-clogged streets to go to
restaurants and cinemas or shop for Christmas presents.
    ``This will be a catastrophic month if the strike
continues,'' said Philippe Vindry, chairman of Printemps
department stores.
    ``When there is no public transport, there are no
customers,'' said Jean-Michel Hallez, director of the Galeries
Lafayette chain's main store in central Paris.
    Store sales were running at about half the normal rate for
the holiday season, he told Reuters.
    To help shops catch up, Paris mayor Jean Tiberi asked the
government to allow shops to open on Sundays during December, a
city hall spokeswoman said, adding that approval was expected.
    Conditions looked certain to worsen in the week ahead, with
strikes expected to spread to air travel, schools, public-sector
agencies, health care and even the police force.
    Unions were digging in against government plans to overhaul
the creaking, debt-laden welfare system to bring down state
spending, the central issue in the strikes.
    The four main rail unions, whose nine-day-old strike has
shut down freight and passenger operations throughout France,
announced they would not cooperate with a commission appointed
by the government to trim retirement benefits.
    Government leaders insisted they would not back down.
    They want to raise taxes, control health spending and
tighten retirement packages for public employees to qualify for
a single European currency from 1999.
    The government's tough line was clearly failing to win over
the public.
    An opinion poll commissioned by RTL radio and the newspaper
Le Parisien found that 62 percent sided with the strikers in
their challenge to the government of Prime Minister Alain Juppe.
    Two out of three adults had little or no confidence in the
government's ability to resolve the conflict and 72 percent of
the public sector, two-thirds of the private sector and 54
percent of business heads lacked confidence in Juppe, according
to the CSA survey, conducted on Thursday and Friday.
    But more than a thousand people demonstrated in central
Paris on Saturday, demanding a quick end to the strikes.
    In the Paris area, there no buses and the Metro and regional
commuter railway networks remained shut down.
    Only a few long-distance trains were running, serving the
high-speed lines between Paris, London and Brussels.
    Some 80 of France's 139 postal sorting centres were
disrupted as the strike picked up momentum in the public sector,
endangering mail deliveries.
    Postal officials said the situation would deteriorate on
Monday when about 100 sorting centres and 151 post offices have
voted to strike.
    Telephone services also faced stoppages on Monday as the
Communist-led CGT union said its members at 269 France Telecom
service centres had approved a strike.
 ^REUTER@
Reut12:20 12-02-95

Reuter N:Copyright 1995, Reuters News Service




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