Rail managers are being offered bonuses for driving trains during three months of rolling strikes starting on Monday, as Emmanuel Macron faces a make-or-break confrontation with unions in his push to modernise France, reports The Telegraph.
Air France staff, dustmen, civil servants, electricity, gas and other public utilities workers also plan strikes this week amid spreading unrest and fears of nationwide protests in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 uprising.
Workers at France Télévisions, the state broadcaster, will also strike. Hundreds of supermarkets were forced to close over the Easter weekend as workers walked out in protest against low wages and job cuts at Carrefour, France’s largest private-sector employer.
At least 10 universities have cancelled classes because of student demonstrations against tougher new entrance requirements. Two faculty members face charges over accusations that they encouraged masked thugs armed with baseball bats to attack students staging a sit-in at Montpellier University, in southern France.
The discontent echoes the militancy of 1968, when student protests and nationwide strikes paralysed France’s conservative, post-war establishment and left liberal thinking to dominate social policy and education.
Since then, French presidents’ attempts to take on the powerful unions have generally ended in humiliating U-turns, notably in 1995 when a wave of general strikes forced Jacques Chirac to abandon plans for far-reaching economic reforms.
But Mr Macron is calculating that France is ready to break the taboos that have weakened its economy. Spurred on by his successful labour reforms last year, he is determined to give no ground.
His showdown with the rail unions is seen as his “Thatcher moment”. A poll published on Sunday suggests that nearly three-quarters of the public are convinced that he will win the battle, as Margaret Thatcher did against miners in the 1980s.
The centrist president will still have to proceed with caution. Only 51 per cent of the French back his drive to reform the economy and 46 per cent support the rail strikes, the poll indicates.