Home > France : a million protesters...
Edito Demos-Actions Strikes France
A nationwide one-day strike in France has disrupted travel and business and dealt the first major challenge to the economic program of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Official figures showed turn-out from the public sector, with 30 percent of railway staff and teachers, 23 percent of electricity workers and between 15 and 30 percent of post office staff joining the stoppages.
Demonstrations were staged in cities from Marseille in the south to Le Havre in the north, with the largest demonstrations drawing tens of thousands in the capital.
Unions put the total number of protesters at just over a million, but police said about 440,000 people had taken part.
Clashes broke out between police and protesters at a rally in the Corsican port of Ajaccio, where tension has been running high over the planned privatisation of a state-owned ferry company.
Around a third of suburban trains were running in Paris with some cancellations on metro and bus services.
The situation was worse in Marseille and Bordeaux, where most public transport was out of action.
There were cancellations and delays of up to two hours at Paris’s two airports.
Most national newspapers failed to go on sale because of action by print-workers.
Union leaders claimed the day was a success.
"The government and employers have a few days to give tangible signs that they have heard the message. We are already poised to start planning a follow-up if the right response doesn’t come," said Bernard Thibault of the General Labour Cofederation (CGT).
Five of the country’s biggest trade unions called the stoppage to protest the reform policies of Mr Villepin’s centre-right government and to push for pay rises.
Their main target was a new labour contract which makes it easier for companies with fewer than 20 staff to hire and fire workers in their first two years of employment.
The strike came at a sensitive time for Mr Villepin, who has been rocked by the crisis over the National Corsica Mediterranean Company (SNCM) which operates ferries between Corsica and north Africa and ports on the Mediterranean coast.
Plans to sell off the heavily indebted company sparked days of violence in Corsica, a near-blockade of the island and the shut-down of the France’s largest port, Marseille.
Forum posts
5 October 2005, 16:43
LOL this is great, what else should we expect over there...LOL
Have you read about the new law in Italy ’Want to check your e-mail in Italy? Bring your passport.
Italy claims that its new stance on security led to the arrest of Hussein Osman, also known as Hamdi Issac — one of the men behind the failed bombing of the London underground July 21.
Due to new measures, more than 25 Islamic extremists were arrested on Italian soil in 2005, according to the Interior Ministry. The ministry also reported that they are conducting "rigorous surveillance" of high-risk areas of terrorist activity and over 13,000 strategic locations in Italy. On Aug. 12 and 13 alone, a reported 32,703 checks were carried out on suspicious individuals.
Despite the inconvenience, most Italians seem relatively unfazed by the law.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/t...
They woudn’t be a France or Italy if not for the USA, we are taking notice of what friends we have, and we see very few to none now. Its time to turn our backs on these nations.
Before they take us down..........
6 October 2005, 01:04
1. There might not have been a USA without the French, and their money. That’s not in our history books, I can’t blame you for not knowing this.
2. Your government has made you believe that the US had to stay in Europe, after WW2. How naive for you to think that is true. The whole Cold War was caused by the US. We threw the first 2 A-bombs without need. We are the self proclaimed policeman of the world. You and I are paying for all this. Apparently you think we need to, while I think it was all in vain. Everything the US does, every government we have ever put in place in the world, blew up in our face.
3. The more countries we mess with, the more enemies we’ll have. We are just finding out in the 21-st century what the French and the British did find out centuries earlier. How long can the ignorant US public be fooled? A long time as long as only 17%(who have a passport) of the US citizens are ignorant about the rest of the world, and are conditioned by companies like FOX.
4. I think the French are right about letting their government know that they don’t like what it does.
6 October 2005, 07:23
Vive la france. France is the mother of human rights and democracy (...not Greek, they had slaves, like their American successors). People with common sense, that is what our planet need.
Americans stop your occupation of Europe and get your fascists troops home and take your nuclear dirt with you (...we know you would call it WMD if other countries except Israel or Britain posses it).