FRANCE: French commuters suffer through rush hour crunch at end of nation-wide transport strike that caused major disruption

French commuters were forced to wait hours in bottleneck minimal transport services late on Wednesday (November 14) in Paris after a paralysing transport strike that had union leaders vowing to extend the stand-off with the government for a second day. Parisians flooded train stations with skeletal schedules and drivers sat in traffic for hours waiting for overcrowded streets to flow while other commuters either stayed home, walked, biked or skated to work and back home. At the end of the workday, streets in Paris were heaving with mopeds, bikes, cars and pedestrians all battling to get home without its usually efficient metro and bus system. "I have children, I had to leave one hour early, organise differently, it's a real nightmare." said one commuter at the end of her working day. Striking French transport and energy workers caused widespread disruption for the second time in a month in a protest over pensions that is the biggest test yet of President Nicolas Sarkozy's reform drive. Only a handful of trains were scheduled to run on Wednesday and Paris's transport system operated reduced services. The open-ended stoppages will continue on Thursday but there were signs they may not drag on too long after unions and government agreed a compromise over negotiating methods. Sarkozy has broad public support for the reform which aims to bring generous pension provisions for about 500,000 public sector workers in line with those of all other workers ahead of a general pension reform next year. Several thousand union members marched in central Paris, playing music, waving banners and blocking traffic. Sarkozy has said repeatedly he will not back down on his plan to end the "special regimes" that were introduced last century to allow workers with arduous jobs to retire after 37.5 years of pension contributions compared to 40 years for others. Most unions have also stood firm, promising open-ended strikes and raising the prospect that the disruption could drag into next week when civil servants are due to stage a 24-hour stoppage to protest at state sectorjob cuts. But both sides indicated on Wednesday they did not want the conflict to last and union and government comments seemed to point to a solution.

ITN Source | November 15, 2007

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