INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE
PAGE 1 Day of French protests draws droves nationwide By Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2005 PARIS Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across France on Tuesday in 150 anti-government marches to protest privatization, stagnant wages and a law that makes it easier to lay off employees at small companies. The broad-based protest led by labor unions and leftist political parties was backed by nearly three-quarters of the public, according to opinion polls. Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said he "heard the message" from the streets. "We want to respond to their concerns and their aspirations," he said. "They want results and we are fighting for them." At the Place de la Bastille in Paris, Pierre Gallois, 54, an employee at the state-owned electricity utility, EDF, said he was shocked by the passage of a law over the summer that allows companies with fewer than 20 employees to skirt the labor code and lay off people "without any justification." "We will soon be reduced to receiving daily wages," he said. Didier Ringot, 38, a software engineer at Alcatel, the French telecommunications company, said he was marching to protest against the "ridiculous" raises of 3 percent that he and his colleagues received this year, after zero increases in previous years. "Compare this with the profits that Alcatel is making," he said. "We see that they have the means." Demonstrators in Paris appeared glum more than angry, a mood captured by a televised debate Tuesday on the theme of whether France was going through a bout of depression. Guests on the program analyzed recent events in France, as if the country were lying on a psychiatrists' couch, an analogy that may be apt since annual per capita sales of antidepressants in France have doubled from half a box in 1990 to 1.09 boxes in 2003, according to government data. The demonstrations came at a time of deep questioning in France about the persistent levels of high unemployment, and about the future of the country's relatively generous social programs. France marks the 60th anniversary of its universal health care system this week, but pessimistic commentators, pointing out the perennial deficits of the health and unemployment benefits system, warned of the end of the "état providence," where the state served as a sort of divine caregiver. Of French people polled over the weekend by the BVA agency, 72 percent said the strikes and demonstrations were justified. This high level of support is not in itself very surprising in a country where protest marches are seen by many as a normal means of expression. But disapproval of government policies is broad-based. "The most worrying thing for Dominique de Villepin and his future political projects is that the pessimism is all-encompassing," Gaël Sliman, deputy director of the BVA, said in a report released Tuesday. Sliman said 62 percent of people surveyed rated the government's economic policies as bad, including 70 percent senior managers, 68 percent of blue-collar workers, 66 percent of employees overall and 79 percent of private contractors. A representative sample of 1,004 people was surveyed for the BVA poll, taken on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. The strike and protest leaders said they expected Villepin to come to the negotiating table and threatened further actions if he did not. The lion's share of protesters Tuesday came from the public sector. But private sector workers also participated, especially from companies like Hewlett-Packard, which recently announced layoffs of 1,200 staff members in France, news that stunned employees at the profitable company and heightened the sense of vulnerability in France. The BVA poll said workers at private companies were more sympathetic toward the protests (78 percent) than civil servants (73 percent). Some commentators wrote off their significance. "This strike today is a non-event par excellence," Jacques Marseille, a professor of history at the Sorbonne, said on LCI television. "This is the ritual strike of autumn. Then there is the one in spring." France is well known for its strikes, but the paradox, experts say, is that only 8 percent of workers here are unionized, the lowest percentage in Western Europe, with an average of 30 percent. Guy Groux, director of research at the CNRS-Sciences Po institute in Paris, said the frequency of loud protests in Paris and other cities was a sign of union weakness in France, not strength. "This is a very activist union movement," Groux said. "Because they can't mobilize people within companies, they often have to go into the streets." Marseille said: "There is a feeling that what is blocking this country are strong unions. No. The country is blocked because we have very weak unions." The demonstrations followed the blockade of Corsica by sailors of a state-owned ferry company over the weekend and strike at Marseille's port. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Help save the life of a child. 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