Angry French in nationwide strike over crisis

Hundreds of thousands of angry French workers took to the streets Thursday in a nationwide strike aimed at making President Nicolas Sarkozy boost wages and protect jobs as the economic crisis deepens. "Sarkozy has to take from the billionaires and give a bit back to the poor," said teacher Jean-Baptiste Voltuain, echoing mounting calls for the right-wing government to boost social spending by hiking taxes on the rich. Voltuain was one of the marchers at the biggest rally in Paris, which was led by the leaders of France's eight main unions as it snaked its way loudly through the east of the capital in warm spring sunshine. Unions said 1.6 million people were taking part in the protests across the country, but police put the number at 600,000. A million civil servants went on strike for the day, officials said, while protestors from both the public and private sectors marched in the capital and in Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg and around 200 other towns and cities. Protestors smashed windows at the MEDEF employers' federation in the northern town of Rouen, but there were no other reports of violence during the one-day strike which polls say is supported by nearly 80 percent of the French. Strike action sparked flight cancellations in Paris's Orly airport, but most flights out of the main Charles de Gaulle airport went ahead, officials said. The state rail operator SNCF cancelled 40 percent of high-speed TGV services and half of other regional trains. Paris commuters were spared major disruption due to a new law enforcing a minimum service during strikes, while metro and bus lines were running normally. The protests were the latest sign of mounting public anger as France and its European neighbours feel the bite of a recession set to last well into 2010. Many fear for their jobs, with two million already unemployed in France and 350,000 more posts predicted to go this year as unemployment surges past eight percent. "I have two kids, a mortgage, I moved house to be nearer my job and now it looks like I might lose it," said Maher Khedira, 45, an engineer with car parts supplier Faurecia, a Peugeot subsidiary that is slashing hundreds of jobs across France this year. "I'm really worried," he said as he marched in Paris, while around him other protestors blew whistles and chanted anti-employer slogans, and music blasted from sound systems on trucks. In Compiegne, just north of Paris, workers burned tyres in the streets to protest over the closure of a German-owned Continental tyre plant with the loss of 1,120 jobs in nearby Clairoix, the latest in a wave of factory shutdowns. To cushion the economic blow, unions are demanding that Sarkozy hike the minimum wage, increase taxes on the rich and scrap plans to cut public sector jobs. "The government has to go further," said Francois Chereque, leader of the powerful CFDT union, as he marched in Paris. He and other union leaders have warned of more protests and strikes unless their demands are met. Sarkozy agreed last month to a package of social benefits worth 2.6 billion euros after a first day of mass protests brought a million people onto the streets on January 29. That came after he announced a 26-billion-euro stimulus plan aimed at business investment. But his right-wing government has ruled out any new social spending. It says its priority is to protect jobs and industry, and it has rejected mounting calls to suspend an unpopular cap on income tax attacked as a handout to the rich. Seeking to deflect public anger, the government has called on the MEDEF federation to cap executive pay at firms that announce layoffs. But the MEDEF rejected the suggestion on Thursday. Authorities fear that a tough six-week strike on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, which ended with a deal to hike wages, could embolden workers on the mainland to take a more radical stance. Polls suggest the crisis is already benefiting the extreme-left leader Olivier Besancenot, whose newly-launched Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) is named in recent surveys as the most credible alternative to Sarkozy's government.