On 24 Nov, 12:59, Capitalist Pig
wrote:
> By NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT
> Staff Reporter of the Sun
> November 23, 2007
>
> President Sarkozy of France is on the verge of a breakthrough in his
> ambitious plan to wean his country off the restrictive working
> practices he believes stand in the way of national prosperity.
>
> Yesterday, the strike of rail and subway workers that has crippled
> France for nine days was clearly crumbling, as workers began returning
> to work in large numbers and union branches conceded that support for
> the dispute is collapsing.
>
> "We think a dynamic of return to work has begun," Julie Vion, a
> spokeswoman for France's state-owned railroad network, SNCF, said.
>
> Union leaders began to concede defeat yesterday. "We have to face
> reality. Since yesterday's negotiations, things have changed. The
> strike is no longer the solution. The strike strategy is no longer
> winning," a leader of the Sud union representing Paris underground
> railway workers, Philippe Touzet, said in an interview with Bloomberg
> News.
>
> The collapse of support for the strike by individual rail workers
> marks the first success in what Mr. Sarkozy considers the key goal of
> his presidency, the abandonment of expensive entitlements and special
> conditions for public sector workers, including generous early
> retirement and pension benefits for half a million rail workers, which
> he believes make France uncompetitive.
>
> Managers for SNCF announced yesterday that 42 out of 45 rail union
> committees have voted to abandon the national strike that has frozen
> the country's economy, and will return to work without delay.
>
> SNCF said 540 out of 700 of their high-speed TGV trains were running
> normally yesterday. They predicted rail services would continue to
> improve Friday and would be almost back to normal by Saturday.
>
> Top executives for RATP, the Paris metro subway system, said they
> expected 70% of trains on most lines, 75% of buses, and 80% of trams
> to be running as normal Friday.
>
> Rail union leaders conceded that their members "should be heading
> towards a return to work," but suggested that other forms of
> industrial action may take the place of strikes.
>
> "According to initial returns from the general assemblies, it should
> be heading towards a return to work. We're heading towards a
> suspension" of the strike, a member of the powerful CGT union, Daniel
> Tourlan, said in Marseilles yesterday.
>
> He threatened other forms of protest rather than the strike, which
> crippled the nation's centralized transport system. "It's only the
> form of action that's changing. The determination of the rail workers
> is intact," he said.
>
> Mr. Sarkozy has kept aloof from the negotiations between rail network
> managers and the unions and has largely refrained from commenting on
> the strike, which has proved enormously unpopular with French
> commuters.
>
> His solitary intervention was to condemn sabotage to the high-speed
> railroad, urging that the culprits who damaged rails and electrical
> connections, thereby endangering passenger safety, be punished with
> "extreme severity."
>
> Instead, the president has left Prime Minister Fillon to front his
> government's efforts to bring the strike to a swift end while offering
> the prospect in negotiations of compensation for some of the rail
> workers' lost privileges.
>
> On the table are salary increases and a top-up scheme for pensions to
> replace job security and retirement for workers as young as 50,
> instead of the nationwide standard of 65. Under the proposed reforms,
> workers would have to work for 40 years to qualify for full pensions,
> compared with 37.5 years now. Negotiations will resume Monday.
>
> Mr. Fillon praised the "responsible attitude of the principle unions"
> at a meeting of French mayors yesterday and welcomed the "patience" of
> the French people. Finance Minister Christine Lagarde puts the cost of
> the dispute at $594 million a day in lost business.
>
> The collapse of the strike "looks like a victory for the government
> and a green light for more structural reforms in France," an economist
> at BNP-Paribas in Paris, Dominique Barbet, told Bloomberg in an e-
> mail.
>
> However, the new pay and conditions for rail workers proposed by the
> government may be more than anticipated when they are fully disclosed
> at the end of negotiations expected to be completed by December 18.
>
> When the rail strike is settled, Mr. Sarkozy must confront widespread
> opposition to his education reforms, where he has passed laws offering
> more autonomy to educational institutions to improve tuition standards
> and increase the amount of private funding in colleges.
>
> The proposals have been welcomed with strikes and protests by France's
> students, who have historically played an important part in national
> opposition to government policies.
>
> Forty-four out of France's 82 universities were disrupted by student
> protests yesterday and seven were shut down. About 2,600 students from
> the University of the Sorbonne in Paris, the cauldron of student
> protest since the national strike of workers and students in 1968, and
> others marched in the streets yesterday.
employ more immigrants, they don't strike..... |