Trade unions join Paris protests

PARIS — Students battled with police Tuesday and commuters battled with widespread service disruptions as cities across France were hit with strikes and demonstrations against the government's attempt to reform youth-labor laws.

For the most part, the demonstrations were peaceful, but at the Place de la République, in the center of Paris, riot police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators who attacked them with stones and bottles. Police made 787 arrests around France — 488 of them in Paris, National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said. In the capital, 46 demonstrators and nine police officers were injured, The Associated Press reported.

According to police estimates, a little more than 1 million people joined the demonstrations in more than 70 cities. The organizers — trade unions and student unions — put the figure at 2.7 million.

Leaders of France's labor unions promised to keep up the one-day strikes until Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin withdraws the controversial reform.

In recent years, street protests have become a springtime rite of passage for students in France.

The barricades at the Sorbonne and other universities across France evoke memories of the 1968 student protests, but the similarities end there. The Class of '68 wanted a revolution; the Class of '06 wants a secure job.

The point of contention is a new labor law called the First Employment Contract, set to take effect next month, that would allow businesses to dismiss new hires younger than 26 without cause during the first two years of employment.

The idea is to make it easier for employers to hire young people, but students see it as an attempt to dismantle the elaborate social-welfare system that they take as their due.

"This government is doing everything it can to break down the benefits and social protections that the people have fought for over the years. They are trying to destroy the collective consensus," said Julien Pignon, 26, a law student who took part in the Paris protest.

"We don't believe the contract will create new jobs," Pignon said. "The companies will use it to hire people they would have had to hire anyway, and the workers will have less protection."

The jobless rate for people younger than 30 in France is 23 percent. Overall unemployment is 9.6 percent.

Most of the young people supporting the protests are middle class, and beneath the bravado is a deep anxiety about the future.

In one frequently cited poll, young people in France were asked their reaction to globalization. Forty-eight percent replied "fear," only 27 percent said "hope." In another survey, nearly 70 percent said that a secure job in the civil service is their preferred career path.

Also

Schools closed, libraries shut, trash was left uncollected and other services came to a halt Tuesday in many parts of Britain as public-sector workers went on strike over a pensions dispute. At issue is a system in which many government workers can retire with full benefits at age 60 if they have completed 25 years of service. This fall, the government says, rising costs will force it to scrap this so-called rule of 85 — for teaching assistants, police community-support officers, school-meal workers, garbage collectors and other local-government employees, forcing them to work longer before they retire.