France:The French transport strike will continue for a second day today, but there was optimism last night that the stoppage, over an end to special retirement provisions for some public sector workers, could be resolved quickly.
"We're making progress," the French prime minister Francois Fillon said late yesterday, alluding to negotiations between his government and trade unionists. "We can probably get out of this strike fairly quickly," Guillaume Pépy, the director general of the French railway company SNCF predicted.
Disruption yesterday was less severe than in a similar strike on October 18th. The strike should further ease today when 150 of 700 high-speed TGV trains are expected to operate, compared to only 80 yesterday.
Paris metro authority RATP had announced only 10 per cent of its trains would run in Paris yesterday, but more than twice that number were in service, with a similar number expected today. Paris bus services should increase to 30 per cent today, compared to 15 per cent yesterday.
The stoppages nonetheless created massive traffic jams around Paris and forced many thousands of commuters to walk, cycle, hitch-hike or rent cars to get to work.
The only trains that provided normal service were the Eurostar to London and the Thalys to Brussels, because their drivers are not French. Likewise, the only metro line that functioned normally was line 14, which is fully automated.
Some 28 per cent of electricity company employees and 31.2 per cent of gas company employees went on strike. The country's electricity output dropped by 10,000 megawatts, but clients were not affected because electricity companies bought power elsewhere.
The main cause for optimism is the decision by Bernard Thibault, the head of the powerful communist CGT union, to accept negotiations between the government, trade unions and employers on a company-by-company basis. He previously demanded national talks.
Divisions among the unions and the unpopularity of the strike could help bring it to a rapid end. In the past, the French population invariably sided with strikers, but a BVA poll published yesterday showed 58 per cent do not want the government to give in.
Some 500,000 French workers in state-controlled sectors - including transport workers, gas and electricity employees, technicians at the Paris Opera and Comédie Francaise, and parliamentarians - retire after working 37½ years, instead of 40 years like the rest of the workforce. The government says these "special regimes" cost the state €5 billion each year.
French people live 20 per cent longer today than at the end of the second World War, so President Nicolas Sarkozy feels justified asking them to work longer.
But Mr Sarkozy's position is weakened by the €15 billion in tax cuts he has given the country's wealthiest, and because his salary was tripled by the National Assembly. Each time Mr Sarkozy is confronted with a crisis, he swears he will not give in, sticks to the key reform but simultaneously makes a major concession on a related issue. In these negotiations, the government appears likely to grant strikers pay rises towards the end of their careers.
Since public sector pensions are based on the last 10 years of salary - compared to the last 25 years for the private sector - the beneficiaries of "special regimes" look set to increase their pensions in exchange for working two-and-a-half years longer.
The unions and the socialist party claim the government is trying to break the "special regimes" as a prelude to reducing all pension benefits in a general reform next year.