Will the United States "General Strike" be as large and widespread ;and
effective as the General Strike of 2006 in France ?
Jim D.
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France Prepares For a General Strike
Standoff Persists Over Law on Youth Job Rights
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; Page A18
PARIS, March 27 -- France prepared for widespread worker strikes on Tuesday
that will target almost every facet of public life, from transportation
systems to neighborhood cigarette shops, in an escalation of protests
against a controversial job law.
At the Place de la Republique in central Paris on Monday, maintenance teams
pried up the metal grills protecting trees and carted away loose paving
stones -- anything that could be turned into a weapon in the huge commercial
square where the Paris rally is scheduled to end Tuesday. Police warned shop
and restaurant owners to close their businesses and shutter their windows.
.
With the government and unions refusing to soften their positions over a law
that allows employers to fire workers under age 26 during their first two
years on the job, police were preparing for the largest demonstrations in
three weeks of protests.
The government announced Monday that it expects striking rail, bus and
subway workers to cause major disruptions, as will air traffic controllers,
workers at electricity, gas and telephone companies, and school employees.
In addition, banks, neighborhood cigarette shops and post offices are set to
close. Newspapers will not be printed for Tuesday distribution, according to
union officials.
Both sides in the conflict viewed Tuesday's general strike as pivotal in the
standoff, which threatens the stability of President Jacques Chirac's
government and the presidential ambitions of his prime minister, Dominique
de Villepin, the author of the contentious law, due to take effect next
month.
Some officials fear the protests could reignite the violence that swept
through the country's poor suburban areas last fall. Youths from primarily
immigrant families torched thousands of cars and hundreds of government
buildings and private businesses in what many participants called a show of
outrage against government neglect.
While street demonstrations are a fixture of French urban life, the protests
that student unions began three weeks ago, now joined by labor unions, are
the largest in years. Just over a week ago, an estimated 1 million people
took part in demonstrations in 150 cities.
Last week, hooded youths infiltrated the concluding rally of a march in the
heart of Paris, setting cars ablaze, smashing shop windows and hurling
stones, boards and garbage-container stands at riot police.
That violence and outbursts in other French cities have alarmed citizens and
officials. The images of burning cars and bat-wielding vandals "is not at
all helping us," said Clement Boudin, a 23-year-old student at the Sorbonne
University and a leader of the National Student Union of France. He worked
in the organization's cluttered headquarters Monday, juggling two phones and
chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes.
Even as his group condemned the violence, Boudin and many other student
union officials have been reluctant to criticize the youths from poor
suburban communities that have infiltrated the cause. "We can understand it
to a certain extent -- that kind of violence from people completely excluded
from the system," Boudin said. "They don't have any other means to express
themselves."
Government officials said the new law is intended to encourage employers to
hire more young people by denying them some of the inflexible job
protections that cover older workers. Unemployment overall in France is just
below 10 percent; among young people it is 23 percent, but rises to 40 to 50
percent in poor suburban areas.
A survey conducted by the Ipsos polling institute for the daily newspaper Le
Monde and France 2 television said that 63 percent of respondents opposed
the government's decision to stick by the new law. About half of those
polled, however, said they could support the law with some modifications.
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