French riot police forced open a strategic fuel refinery yesterday that had been a bastion of resistance to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s bid to raise the retirement age to 62, pushing striking workers aside in a bid to end gasoline shortages.
The operation came as the French Senate prepared to vote on a pension reform at the heart of the unions’ anger, after the government short-circuited a protracted debate.
The French Interior Ministry said the operation succeeded “without incident,” but the CGT union said three workers were injured in the melee.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Emergency workers brought stretchers to the depot in Grandpuits east of Paris, the closest source of gasoline supplies to the capital.
The Senate was near certain to approve the measure — which raises the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 — later yesterday, despite months of strikes and protests that reached a climax of radical action and scattered clashes this week.
Helmeted officers in body armor descended on the refinery and depot at Grandpuits overnight, carrying out regional authorities’ orders to make strikers return to work. The site is run by oil giant Total SA.
Workers have been camped for 10 days in front of the site, blocking access and contributing to punishing fuel shortages. As of yesterday, about 20 percent of France’s service stations were still empty, down from 40 percent a few days ago, French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said yesterday, according to his office.
Sarkozy ordered regional authorities to intervene and force open depots, accusing the strikers of holding ordinary people and the French economy “hostage.”
Sarkozy says overhauling the money-losing pension system is vital to ensuring that future generations receive any pensions at all.
It’s a choice many European governments are facing as populations live longer and government debts soar.
However, French unions say retirement at 60 is a hard-earned right and that the working class is unfairly punished by the pension reform. They fear this reform will herald the end of an entire network of welfare benefits that make France an enviable place to work and live.
The government’s firm stance has further angered the most entrenched protesters.
“We are outraged, scandalized,” said Charles Foulard, a union leader at the Grandpuits depot.
Foulard has become a symbol of the union movement against the retirement reform.
The government regional representative, prefect Jean-Michel Devret, accompanied police to the picket line.
“I want things to go smoothly and the barricade must be lifted, and that’s what we will do,” he said.
Police also broke a picket line early yesterday at a fuel depot in Grand Quevilly in western France. Police forced it open earlier this week, but defiant protesters had blocked it again on Thursday.
While many in France are used to strikes and protests, patience started wearing thin this week as gasoline supplies dwindled.
Families were particularly worried ahead of school vacations that start this weekend.
Paris taxi driver Jerome Nourry resorted to getting gas in neighboring Belgium.
“We have to be inventive. I drove a customer to Belgium yesterday, so I took advantage [of the trip] to put some gas in a container,” he said in Paris yesterday morning. “We do what we can, in order to be able to work.”
Unions blame the government for letting tensions build so high and announced two more days of protest nationwide, next week and the week after. The bold action suggested that opponents believe they have the power to force the government’s hand.
“I think that is time to stop blaming workers unions for the blockage,” Francois Chereque of the moderate CFDT union said. “There is a sentiment of great misunderstanding among the French people.”
Violence on the margins of student protests have added a new dimension to the volatile mix.
Police vans and water cannon trucks stood ready yesterday in Lyon, where city workers cleaned up scattered glass from rampages the day before. Police used tear gas and water cannon against youths hurling bottles and overturning cars.
“It is not troublemakers who will have the last word in a democracy,” Sarkozy told local officials in central France, promising to find and punish rioters.
The protests have also blocked hundreds of ships at the Mediterranean port of Marseille and even forced Lady Gaga to cancel Paris concerts.
The final text was expected to be adopted next week by both houses.
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