PARIS — Masked youths wearing black torched cars, smashed storefronts and threw up roadblocks Tuesday, clashing with riot police across France as protests over raising the retirement age to 62 took a radical turn.
Hundreds of flights were canceled, and desperate drivers searched for gas as oil refinery strikes and blockages emptied the pumps at nearly a third of the nation’s gas stations.
France’s 12 refineries have been on strike for a week, and no crude is arriving at the ports of Marseille, Le Havre and Nantes. The government has blamed motorists rushing to fill up for shortages at service stations, with television news leading with pictures of snaking lines of drivers waiting to fill up.
Nationwide protests since early September against the pension legislation - which raises the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60 and the age for a full pension to 67 from 65 - have been largely peaceful. But Tuesday’s clashes, notably just outside Paris and in the southeastern city of Lyon, revived memories of student unrest in 2006 that forced the government to abandon another unpopular labor bill.
Still, President Nicolas Sarkozy was unbending Tuesday, vowing to guarantee public order in the face of “troublemakers.” The government announced a plan to pool gasoline stocks so that dry stations can be filled.
“There are people who want to work, the immense majority, and they cannot be deprived of gasoline,” Sarkozy said in the coastal resort of Deauville, where he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Sarkozy said he would take measures “to guarantee order.”
INTERACTIVE
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“This reform had been postponed for too long and the deadline couldn’t be pushed further anymore,” Sarkozy said at a news conference in Deauville, France. “I hope that everyone stays calm so that things don’t go beyond certain limits ... I will see to it with the security forces that public order is guaranteed.”
A new test could come as early as Thursday, when students plan a day of mobilization with a demonstration in Paris hours before the Senate is to vote on the retirement measure.
“The government will continue to dislodge protesters blocking the fuel depots. ... No one has the right to take hostage an entire country, its economy and its jobs,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon said after meeting with oil industry executives. “The pension bill will continue on its path through parliament and be voted on.
“There is a right to strike, not a right to block the country.”
Some 4,000 gas stations - out of 12,700 nationwide - were empty of gas Tuesday afternoon, the Environment Ministry said.
ExxonMobil declared “force majeure,” in France, saying it will be unable to meet some of its oil supply obligations and that it has begun shutting down its Gravenchon refinery, the larger of its two oil-processors in the country.
ENERGY, YOUTHS A FACTOR
French unions have a long tradition of street protests, but the current strife is particularly worrisome because it has touched the vital energy sector and is drawing-often volatile youths into the mix.
Troublemakers tagged onto the coattails of student demonstrators in 2006 when the government was forced to abandon a law making it easier for employers to hire and fire young people. The specter of 2005 riots that spread through poor housing projects nationwide with large disenfranchised immigrant populations is never far away.
These protesters are trying to stop lawmakers from approving a bill that would raise the retirement age to prevent the pension system from going bankrupt as people live longer and a diminishing pool of young workers pays into the system.
The lower National Assembly has already passed the pension legislation.
It’s now in the Senate, which still has 400 amendments to consider, Sen. Jean-Claude Gaudin said on LCI television Tuesday. The final vote is planned for Thursday night, though the debate could last through the weekend, he said.
The government says it’s still open to some small changes in the bill, and has already made concessions that will allow people in difficult jobs as well as working mothers with three children to retire earlier. It says it won’t budge on the retirement ages.
Unions claim the move would erode France’s near sacred tradition of generous social benefits - including long vacations, contracts that make it hard for employers to lay off workers and a state subsidized health-care system - in favor of “American-style capitalism.”
“France wouldn’t be what it is today if the generations that came before us hadn’t taken to the streets,” said Lidwine Mure, a 32-year-old teacher who took part in all six Paris protests since September. Her dark clothes were a collage of pro-strike stickers.
1.1 MILLION MARCHERS
Some 1.1 million people joined 260 protest marches across France on Tuesday, according to the Interior Ministry, though trade unions put the figure at three times that.
The Paris march, which drew some 60,000 people according to police, was peaceful despite a morning of violence at a high school in Nanterre, just west of the French capital, where several hundred youths threw stones at police and scuffled with outsiders. Police, lobbing tear gas, charged and barricaded the area. An Associated Press photographer was knocked off his motorbike and punched by the youths.
A middle school in the city of Le Mans burned down overnight after a student protest during which the gates to the school were blocked. Police suspect arson, France Info radio reported.
The most violent clashes occurred in Lyon, where rampaging youths torched garbage cans and cars and overturned bus stations. Numerous shops were pillaged. A second AP photographer was slightly injured.
The Interior Ministry said more than 1,150 protesters were arrested after violence in the past week.
A HIT FOR SARKOZY
Sarkozy has long touted his plan to increase the retirement age as his priority ahead of 2012 presidential elections, and the measure is expected to pass easily in the Senate, after being approved earlier by the lower house of parliament.
But victory could have a high cost: The unpopular measure is widely seen as feeding Sarkozy’s dismal approval ratings.
Polls show Sarkozy, who came into office in 2007 with a huge mandate, as unpopular as ever. According to the latest polls, published Tuesday, he had a 61 percent negative rating with only 35 percent of the 1,002 people surveyed giving him thumbs up. It was conducted by Viavoice for the daily Liberation.
Sarkozy’s detractors contend the retirement changes favor the rich and feeds the notion of an elitist France run by a man cozy with captains of industry.
“In France, we have a big problem with inequality and those of us on the bottom are sick and tired of taking the hit, while those on high get off scot-free,” said Pascale Thierse, a teacher at the Paris protest.
“With this reform the bottom is again getting swindled, while the richest keep getting tax rebates and the like.”
Sarkozy called the overhaul his “duty” as head of state. The protests in France come as countries across Europe are cutting spending and raising taxes to bring down record deficits and debts from the worst recession in 70 years.
TRAINS, PLANES IDLED
A strike of railway workers also went into its seventh day Tuesday. The state-run railway network SNCF said about half of all scheduled trains were not operating.
Half of the flights Tuesday out of Paris’ Orly airport were scrapped, and 30 percent out of other French airports, including the country’s largest, Charles de Gaulle outside Paris, were canceled, theDGAC civil aviation authority said. The authority said there would be more flight cancellations today, with about one in four scheduled flights canceled at Orly.
Strikes by oil refinery workers have proved most brutal for the French, searching for gas as pumps go empty.
The youth element added a new dimension to the protests - and a worry for authorities - with student leaders calling for a demonstration today in front of the Senate.
The head of the UNEF student union, Jean-Baptiste Prevost, said the young people “have no other solution but to continue.”
“Every time the government is firm, there are more people in the street,” he told iTele.
The Mediterranean port city of Marseille has been particularly hard hit, with a strike by garbage collectors leaving the streets buried in heaps of trash. Still support for labor remains strong.
“Transport, the rubbish, the nurses, the teachers, the workers, the white collar, everyone who works, we should all be united. If there is no transport today, we’re not all going to die from it,” said Francoise Michelle, a 55-year old Marseille resident.
Information for this article was contributed by Jenny Barchfield, Elaine Ganley, Jean-Marie Godard, Angela Charlton and Oleg Cetinic of The Associated Press; by Siegfried Mortkowitz of German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur, and by Gregory Viscusi, Tara Patel, Mark Deen, Andrew Roberts and Helene Fouquet of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/20/2010