THE FRENCH truck drivers in Calais were delighted yesterday with what seemed to be progress in yesterday's talks aimed at ending the 10 day strike yesterday. But a few grumbled that after 20 hours it was "about time" the union negotiators in Paris came to an agreement with the government.
When the talks resumed yesterday it was clear that French haulage companies were extremely unwilling - indeed they simply could not afford - to pay the extra costs needed to fund early retirement. So, perhaps with an eye to preserving the fragile negotiations, the French government indicated that it might provide money.
"In France, the support for the truck drivers is based on feeling discontent with the government," said a woman at Le Diplomat, a cafe in the centre of Calais. "It is not that the French people enjoy a strike," she said, it is because "we believe in fighting for a cause".
The feeling of "discontent" with the government, however, seems to have taken hold not only among the public and the truck drivers but also with airline and railway workers in France. Although the country's attention is focused on the strike at the ports and on the roads, Air France and Air Inter Europe began 48 hours of industrial action yesterday.
The fact that France is not in the grip of a general strike is largely due to the decision of the railway workers to restrict their dispute to a few, local stations.
At Calais port, two Irish truck drivers are "still stranded, still waiting", despite the decision by some of their colleagues to drive to Zeebrugge on Tuesday night.
One man who made the journey was Mr Noel Moore, of Tinryland, Co Carlow. He drove to Belgium to make a 4 a.m. sailing to Britain. Outside Calais he was stopped by the French police, who were diverting traffic, and he was delayed for a further eight hours.
He missed the crossing and said: "I am looking at a 10 hour wait in Zeebrugge but at least I was able to get moving.
Mr Henry Mitchell, of Co Roscommon, and Mr Peter Moore, of Sallynoggin, Co Dublin, now regret not going to Zeebrugge. Mr Moore said: "We are in contact with our companies back in Ireland every day and it was suggested that we go to Zeebrugge. We are fed up and we'd rather be on the move, but despite that at least we are near the front of the queue here. The other lads could well be at the back of the queue in Zeebrugge."
The men spent the day waiting in the lorry park for news of the strike's resolution. The camaraderie between the Irish truck drivers and the British and Portuguese truckers is evident. Cigarettes are shared, money is borrowed and the drivers help each other to jump start their engines because the cold weather has meant many are running cabin heaters from their batteries.
"Apart from the obvious, one of the annoying things about this situation is that half the time we just don't know what is going on," said Mr Moore. It is clear that some of the French truck drivers who live nearby return home in the evening and rejoin the picket line in the morning. Some British truck drivers have been told that the French drivers will go home for the weekend but if that happens one said: "We'll club a few lads together and pull their trucks out of the way so that we can get back to Dover." The Irish truck drivers said they would not hesitate to join the British drivers to escape the blockade.
Reuter adds: In Austria, Greece, Italy, Spain and the Czech republic, drivers were also taking evasive action to avoid being caught up in the same 200 roadblocks set up by the striking truckers within France and on its borders.
In Vienne, eastern central France lorry drivers stepped up their blockade of the main road between southern France and the north, preventing the mainly Spanish truckers using a side road to escape a barrage at a key junction near Chasse sur Rhone.
In Austria, authorities refused to ease restrictions on lorries using its roads to let those hit by the French blockade take another route via southern Europe. The chaos caused by the French action has not been helped by the closure of the Channel tunnel following a fire last week.
A tunnel through the Alps in the southern French town of Frejus reopened yesterday after being closed for a day, but only in the direction toward Italy to allow 200 lorries caught on the French side to return.
French authorities stopped lorries arriving from France, saying they would be caught up in the roadblocks.