French workers strike as Emmanuel Macron's cuts loom

Galled by years of public sector pay curbs and President Emmanuel Macron's neoliberal economic program, France's labor unions urged civil servants, hospital staff and other state employees to stop work on Tuesday and join nationwide street protests.

"Thanks to the civil service, all of the unions in this country will be together," said Bernadette Groison, of the national education syndicate, the FSU, France's largest labor alliance. "That shows how high the stakes are."

So far nine trade union federations have called on public servants to go on strike against Macron's policies. Tuesday's walkouts affected schools and day care centers, flights and some energy infrastructure and disrupted public transport.

Civil aviation authorities confirmed to news agencies that they have advised airlines to cancel 20 percent of flights to and from Paris Orly, Lyon and Marseille airports.

Since early April, workers for the national rail carrier, SNCF, have kept up rolling strikes to protest Macron's plans to do away with long-established labor guarantees for train employees.

A separate series of one and two-day strikes for a pay rise to make up for years of wage freezes has disrupted Air France services since February. Even police officers have joined the strikes, snarling traffic on the ring road surrounding Paris to defend their status and retirement benefits.

The president, a former investment banker, froze civil service pay earlier this year, and he plans to cut 120,000 public sector jobs by 2022. Macron's government plans to rely more on contract staff instead of the civil servants traditionally recruited for lifelong careers.

mkg/kms (AFP, Reuters, dpa)

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