FRANCE - STRIKES
French strikes draw more than 300,000
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
On the eve of tripartite negotiations a third of France’s civil servants were on strike. “One should know how to end a strike,” declared President Nicolas Sarkozy in his first public address since the action began one week ago.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
By FRANCE 24 with wires
On the eve of tripartite negotiations a third of France’s civil servants were on strike.
30.12 per cent of the French public sector protested Tuesday afternoon for higher salaries and against staff reductions, according to the Ministry of Civil Service.
The secretary of the General Confederation of Labour (“Confédération générale du travail” or CGT) union, Bernard Thibault, claimed almost 700,000 people went on strike nationwide; mainly civil servants joined by rail workers and students. Police estimates were around half that, at 375,000.
Sarkozy: "One should know how to end a strike"
Around 5pm Paris time, President Nicolas Sarkozy broke his silence on the week-long strike, speaking for the “millions of French people who after a day's work do not have a bus, a metro or a train to get home and who are tired of being held hostage.
“One should know how to end a strike when the time for negotiations starts,” he affirmed in a speech to French mayors, vowing “we won't give in. We won't back down.”
The Parisian public transportation body (RATP) and the French National Railway Company (SNCF) are expected to negotiate proposed reforms to their “special” pension plan Wednesday.
Minister of Labour Xavier Bertrand confirmed the government’s conditional participation: "There will be a representative of the government if there a return to work has momentum ... if more trains and metros are running."
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Sarkozy
By longwalksinparis.blogspot.com
Give a little man the stage and this is what you get. Sarkozy has no coherent plan for anything and when really put to a test he will fail. Maybe he has watched too many American movies and now thinks he's Superman. God bless the French who must suffer through all this.
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