French strikers march, more protests called (fwd)

[Chegitz Guevara <mluziett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc, "the Chegitz," Luzietti
personal homepage: http://shrike.depaul.edu/~mluziett
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A curse on the judges, the coppers and screws | Who tortured the
innocent, the wrongly accused, | For the price of promotion | And justice
to sell | May the judged be their judges when they rot down in hell

The Pogues, "Streets of Sorrow/Birmingham Six"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 95 13:53:22 -0800
From: Neighborhood Queen <clyde@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Multiple recipients of list <riot-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: French strikers march, more protests called

French strikers march, more protests called
a0780LBY894reulb
r i BC-FRANCE-STRIKES   12-16 0620
^BC-FRANCE-STRIKES 3RDLD@
 ^French strikers march, more protests called@
 (Updates with overall numbers of marchers)
    By Philippe Naughton
    PARIS, Dec 16 (Reuter) - Hundreds of thousands of French
workers joined anti-government protest marches on Saturday and
union leaders called another day of action to stop a three-week
public sector strike fizzling out.
    Leading the marches in Paris and other major cities were
rail workers, who on Friday declared victory over Prime Minister
Alain Juppe and voted to start returning to work.
    As transport systems cranked slowly back into action, union
leaders denied that Saturday's protests were a ``last hurrah''
for wider strikes against unpopular welfare reforms.
    ``We're not planning to give up. The railway workers'
victory has given everyone more confidence,'' said Louis
Viannet, secretary-general of the Communist-led CGT, before
calling for another day of protests for Tuesday.
    ``We have won a battle, but not yet the war,'' added
Jean-Jacques Carmentran, head of the rail branch of the
non-partisan but militant Force Ouvriere.
    Unions said more than two million people joined in 165
separate protests across the country, with the largest marches
outside Paris in Marseille, Toulouse, Grenoble and Bordeaux.
    The interior ministry estimated the total at 586,000 -- and
was promptly accused by the CGT of manipulating the figures ``to
minimise the importance of the demonstrations.''
    The Paris march was said by the unions to have drawn 300,000
people. Police said 56,000 people had taken part.
    Juppe has made significant concessions to rail workers by
freezing a plan to restructure the SNCF state railways and
backing down on higher retirement ages for drivers.
    The rail workers also won the head of SNCF chairman Jean
Bergougnoux, who resigned on Friday after being criticised by
Juppe for not encouraging dialogue between management and staff.
    But Juppe has managed to keep intact the core of a plan to
reform the indebted social security system by raising taxes and
tightening controls on healthcare spending. Analysts say his
future as prime minister is tied up with the fate of the plan.
    If the public sector strike, which has involved post and
power workers and schoolteachers, does run out of steam when the
normal working week resumes on Monday, union leaders will have
their hand weakened at a ``social summit'' called to discuss
their grievances with Juppe on Thursday.
    On Saturday morning in Paris, trains were running on five
out of 13 lines on the underground Metro and on some suburban
commuter lines. By the time the protest march was underway only
one Metro line was still running.
    Elsewhere some high-speed TGV trains ran between Paris and
Grenoble, Lyon, Annecy and Geneva. A small number of Eurostar
trains through the channel tunnel were running from Brussels to
London via northern France but there were still none between
Paris and London.
    SNCF officials said it would in any case take several days
to get nationwide services running because a film of rust on the
rails had to be cleared off and safety checks made.
    An opinion poll in the afternoon daily Le Monde on Saturday
showed that more than a third of the French still backed the
strikes, although support for it had declined over the past
week. Twenty-eight percent were opposed to the strike, three
points up from the last poll a week ago.
    A poll to be published in the Journal du Dimanche on Sunday
showed that both Juppe and President Jacques Chirac had made
slight gains in approval ratings over the past month -- although
both men remained deeply unpopular.
    Chirac's approval rating had risen to 30 percent in December
against 27 percent in November. Juppe's was at 28 points against
26 in November.
Reut13:53 12-16-95

Reuter N:Copyright 1995, Reuters News Service


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