March 19 strike: What to expect

Schools, public transport, banks and La Poste will be among services affected by the March 19 strikes.

Unions are calling for the 5.2 million public sector workers in France to join the movement on Thursday, calling for “a halt to the blind politics of redundancies and imposing an immediate moratorium on those contained in the 2009 budget.”

They want to equal the turn out of the last national strike of January 29.

Teachers will be striking over proposed job cuts (13,200 planned in 2009 in schools, colleges and lycées, and 900 in higher education and research) and over reforms put forward by the government.

Parents in Paris have been asked not to send their children to school despite the application of the minimum service.

Public transport will be affected with SNCF unions calling for strikes to begin from 20.00 on Wednesday until 8.00 Friday. (More details will be available at www.infolignes.com)

The Metro will also be affected with four of the eight unions calling for workers to join the strikes – compared to six on January 29.

Air France – eight unions are calling for people to strike, however management say there is no foreseen disruption to traffic at the moment. Striking air traffic controllers on January 29 resulted in flight cancellations.

La Poste, France Télécom and energy sector works including EDF and GDF-Suez will also go on strike.

In the private sector, banks, journalists and workers for commercial giants such as Auchan and Carrefour are among those called on to join in the protest.

Unions CGT and CFDT representing oil company Total will be demonstrating over 555 job cuts after a record profit of €13.9 million was announced for 2008.

It follows the previous strike on January 29 – labelled Black Thursday - where between 1.1 million and 2.5 million people took to the streets calling for the government to take “urgent measures” in the face of the economic crisis.

Photo: Afp/Jacques Demarthon