Workers at France’s biggest oil port broke a month-long strike on Friday and refinery workers also ended walkouts, ending a bitter showdown with French President Nicolas Sarkozy over his flagship pension reform.
The first of several dozen oil tankers moored off the southern port of Marseille could start offloading from Friday evening, local CGT union official Pascal Galeote said after workers at the Fos-Lavera terminal voted for an end to action that had put a stranglehold on refineries.
The strikes, which drained petrol pumps and forced up fuel imports, were the culmination of months of protests against Sarkozy’s plan to lift the retirement age and a major test for the president.
Photo: AFP
Stuck with dismal popularity ratings 18 months before a presidential election, Sarkozy looks stronger for having stared down France’s influential trade unions with a law he says will stem a gaping pension deficit.
Unions still fiercely oppose the law, however, and a clause in the text offering a fuller pension review in 2013 means the issue may yet come back to haunt Sarkozy.
“All this leaves marks, burns even,” a government minister said this week, on condition of anonymity.
The Fos-Lavera strike, which began over local issues but overlapped with the wider anti-pension protests, ended a day after low turnout at street marches showed waning enthusiasm.
Marseille port authorities said it would take about a month to clear the backlog of oil tankers.
French service stations should be back to normal by the middle of next week, French Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said.
“Today a number of elements made it possible to propose that workers go back to work,” Galeote told reporters.
The industrial action failed to stop parliament passing the law this week to gradually raise the minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67. The legislation now just needs Constitutional Court approval.
Sarkozy wants to turn the page after a period that tarnished the image he is trying to present of a modern France that can tackle swollen deficits. He has a busy calendar next week, attending a Franco-British summit in London tomorrow then hosting a three-day state visit by China’s President Hu Jintao.
Sometimes dubbed the “hyper-president” for his energetic style, Sarkozy kept a low profile as strikes began winding down.
Rather than claim victory, he has focused on his meeting with Hu and a November G20 summit in Seoul when France will take over the presidency of the economic leadership forum.
“Some concerns, often legitimate, have been expressed — I have listened to them, I have thought about them and at the appropriate time, I will take initiatives to respond to them,” Sarkozy told a news conference in Brussels for an EU summit.
Sarkozy’s pension reform has sparked some of the most sustained protests in Europe against deficit-cutting measures.
While polls still show most people back the movement, Force Ouvriere union leader Jean-Claude Mailly acknowledged there were were signs of “a little fatigue.”
His victory over the unions gives Sarkozy some breathing time as he looks to reshuffle his Cabinet next month with an eye on wooing centrist and far-right voters whose support he will need in 2012.
But unions are already seizing on a clause in the reform opening up the possibility of a comprehensive pension review in 2013, meaning the issue could still come back to bite Sarkozy.
“The pension problem does not end with the reform being voted. It’s written in the text that the system will be reviewed again in 2013,” CFDT union head Francois Chereque said in an interview with Le Parisien.
Unions meet on Thursday to decide whether to schedule further action beyond street marches set for Saturday, while their representatives at Air France on Friday called for a strike on Thursday. Turnout at demonstrations on Thursday was down by around half from earlier in the month.
French media are largely moving on from the pension showdown and are engrossed in speculation about the Cabinet reshuffle.
FRAUD ALLEGED: The leader of an opposition alliance made allegations of electoral irregularities and called for a protest in Tirana as European leaders are to meet Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialist Party scored a large victory in parliamentary elections, securing him his fourth term, official results showed late on Tuesday. The Socialist Party won 52.1 percent of the vote on Sunday compared with 34.2 percent for an alliance of opposition parties led by his main rival Sali Berisha, according to results released by the Albanian Central Election Commission. Diaspora votes have yet to be counted, but according to initial results, Rama was also leading there. According to projections, the Socialist Party could have more lawmakers than in 2021 elections. At the time, it won 74 seats in the
A Croatian town has come up with a novel solution to solve the issue of working parents when there are no public childcare spaces available: pay grandparents to do it. Samobor, near the capital, Zagreb, has become the first in the country to run a “Grandmother-Grandfather Service,” which pays 360 euros (US$400) a month per child. The scheme allows grandparents to top up their pension, but the authorities also hope it will boost family ties and tackle social isolation as the population ages. “The benefits are multiple,” Samobor Mayor Petra Skrobot told reporters. “Pensions are rather low and for parents it is sometimes
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
RSS