French march in record numbers against pension plan

PARIS,  (Reuters) – French demonstrators hit the  streets in record numbers yesterday in their latest protest  against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to shake up the pension  system, and striking transport workers badly disrupted trains.

Marches across France drew a higher turnout, police and  unions said, than four earlier protests against reforms that  would make people work longer for their pensions in order to  curb a ballooning deficit in retirement coffers.

Yet Sarkozy, a dogged conservative who is aiming to get his  flagship reform passed before he takes on the rotating  presidency of the G20 group of rich and developing nations in  mid-November, looks unlikely to back down.

French media dubbed yesterday the start of the “final battle”  against the pension reform, which is on track to become law by  the end of October. The reform will raise the minimum retirement  age to 62 from 60, and the age at which workers receive a full  pension to 67 from 65.

The reform, which could help safeguard France’s cherished  AAA credit rating as pension costs soar in the years ahead, has  become one of the biggest battles of Sarkozy’s presidency.

Powerful unions, which crushed a 1995 attempt to reform the  system in a country that is fiercely attached to its generous  social benefits system, said the high turnout was a wake-up call  to Sarkozy’s government to return to the negotiating table.

“Your position is untenable. You cannot witness more and  more people in the streets each week, more and more people  joining the strikes, and stick to your intransigent position,”  Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT union, told France 2  television.

Unions said 3.5 million people had joined in the street  marches, up from their estimate of 2.9 million in the Oct. 2  demonstration. The interior ministry put the number at 1.23  million, a rise of nearly a third.

The latest round of strikes disrupted air and train travel  and shut the Eiffel Tower during the afternoon for lack of  staff. Unions are threatening more open-ended walkouts, but  Sarkozy’s government has vowed not to cave in.

“We are determined to see this reform through to its end,”  Prime Minister Francois Fillon told parliament. “We have reached  the limit of the (concessions) that are possible.”

Last week Sarkozy offered concessions to mothers close to  retirement age who give up work to raise several children, and  analysts do not expect him to give up much more ground.

“It’s part of the ritual but nonetheless impressive,” Gilles  Moec, an economist at Deutsche Bank in London, said of the  protests. “Probably not enough to block the pensions bill, but  enough to block any further structural reform.”

Walkouts reduced flights from Paris’s main airports by as  much as 50 percent. One in three high-speed TGV trains were  running, though international trains operated more frequently.

The Paris metro ran limited services, sea ports were  disrupted and oil refinery closures due to related dock worker  strikes raised the spectre of fuel shortages.

Students, concerned that making older people work longer  would shut off job opportunities for them, chanted slogans,  waved banners and climbed onto the roofs of bus shelters with  loudspeakers. There were protests at about 300 schools.