YET THE EURO RISES?

Mass Pensions Demos Test French Government (Brian Love, 5/13/03, Reuters)

More than a million people took to the streets of France on Tuesday as strikes over pension reforms crippled air and rail links and shut schools in an eerie reminder of unrest that forced a government into retreat in the 1990s.

The CGT union said close to two million took part and even a police estimate of 1.1 million was far bigger than the rallies that served notice to the last conservative government in 1995 before three weeks of winter strikes.

Some trade unions called for sporadic follow-up strikes on Wednesday at state railways, urban transport networks, schools and state power utilities, while the union movement as a whole set its sights on another nationwide protest on May 25.

Following Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's warning that "it's not the streets that rule France," Civil Service Minister Jean-Paul Delavoye went on television at the end of "Black Tuesday" to say all was not lost and negotiation was not over.

"This is not the same frame of mind as 1995, even if we have to listen to the voices in the streets. It would be traumatic if the reform did not pass," he said, noting that unions would meet himself and Labour Minister Francois Fillon on Wednesday.

Unions were encouraged by a turnout and commentators seized on parallels with late 1995, when former Prime Minister Alain Juppe ditched pension reforms after weeks of protests and unrest that are also widely blamed for him losing power in mid-1997. [...]

As seas of chanting protesters made their way through Paris and some 100 towns, Fillon fought off fiery attacks from the opposition ranks in parliament over pension reform plans that are due to be approved by cabinet on May 28.

The plans as they stand now would force people in the public sector to pay into the state-run retirement benefit system like private sector employees for 40 years instead of 37-1/2, and to eventually shift both public and private sector workers to 42 years of pension contributions.

It's just outrageous to ask the civil service to be treated like private employees, let alone to begin to pay for their own retirements, eh? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 13, 2003 8:46 PM