Despite mass outcry, Senate in France passes pension bill

Riot police officers stand at the Grandpuits refinery, eastern Paris, Friday Oct. 22, 2010.
Riot police officers stand at the Grandpuits refinery, eastern Paris, Friday Oct. 22, 2010.

— After nearly three weeks of debate and a series of national strikes, the French Senate voted Friday evening to pass President Nicolas Sarkozy’s bill to raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60 and the age for a full pension to 67 from 65.

The vote all but sealed passage of the measure, but the coming days promised more work stoppages and demonstrations by those who feel changing the retirement age threatens a French birthright. Labor unions promised to maintain their protests.

Sarkozy made overhauling the money-losing pension system a centerpiece of his project to modernize France. He says the initiative is vital to ensuring benefits for future generations. Many European governments are making similar choices as populations live longer and government debts soar.

Undaunted by weeks of strikes, the president ordered measures to unblock fuel depots and refineries to get gas flowing again to motorists.

“History [will remember] who spoke the truth,” Sarkozy said during a visit Friday to a factory in central France. “What do you expect of a president? That he tells the truth and does what must be done.”

With about a quarter of gas stations on empty, down from a third earlier in the week, motorists have been forced to reinvent their lives, particularly at the start of a school vacation period today.

INTERACTIVE

http://www.arkansas…" onclick="window.open(this.href,'popup','height=650,width=750,scrollbars,resizable'); return false;">Unrest in Europe grows

Hours before Friday’s vote, riot police forced the reopening of a strategic refinery to help halt crippling fuel shortages.

The effect on the crucial energy sector was anominous specter for whole sectors of the economy. Employment Minister Laurent Wauquiez said this week that 1,500 jobs have been lost daily since the strikes began in earnest on Oct. 12.

Friday’s vote came after some 140 hours of debate, with senators casting ballots by hand into a large green urn, approving the bill 177-153.

Before it becomes law, the initiative must still be approved by a parliamentary committee and voted on again by a joint session of Parliament.

The press office of the Senate said that the committee would begin meeting Monday. That means that the measure could be voted into law by Wednesday.

Sarkozy’s conservative government cut short the debate through a constitutional article that accelerates the process and gives the government final word on which of more than 1,000 amendments will get into the bill. He accused strikers of holding the French and their economy “hostage.”

Speaking before the Senate vote, Labor Minister Eric Woerth said the day will come when opponents of the change “will be grateful to the president, to the government and the parliamentary majority for having had the courage to fully assume their responsibilities.”

Leftist critics called the move a denial of democracy by the president.

“No, you haven’t finished with retirement. You haven’t finished with the French,” said Socialist Sen. Jean-Pierre Bel, alluding to determination by unions, now joined by students, to keep protests alive, even through the coming week of school holidays.

“We will never accept it,” Jean-Claude Mailly, secretary-general of Force Ouvriere union, said on RMC radio. “Just because a law has been voted through doesn’t mean we just say: ‘Oh, too bad.’”

Students planned to block schools Tuesday, and unions scheduled strikes and protests for Thursday and again Nov. 6.

French unions say the minimum retirement age of 60, in place since 1982, is a hard earned right and maintain the working class will be unfairly punished. Many fear it is also a first step to dismantling an entire network of benefits, including long vacations and state-subsidized health care, that make France an enviable place to work and live.

Guy Fischer, a Communist senator, denounced the pension overhaul as “brutal, unjust and inefficient.” Like other critics, he said that under the proposal, 85 percent of costs are paid by workers, leaving companies off the hook.

The legislation phases in the new system, with retirement at 62 in force in 2018.

The French system relies onworkers paying each year for the costs of those who have retired, and even under this new law the pension system will go into deficit again by 2018.

Sarkozy’s plan would bring France closer to Germany and the U.S., which are moving toward setting 67 as the full-retirement age, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Hours before the Senate vote, helmeted riot police in body armor shoved striking workers aside to force open the gates of the Total SA refinery at Grandpuits, east of Paris, one of four refineries in the Paris region. A bastion of resistance, Grandpuits had been shut down for nine days, one of the nation’s 12 refineries on strike.

“The strikers have opened the valves,” said Franck Monchon, a delegate of the hardline CGT union. Protesters symbolically burned a coffin after the police intervention.

A spokesman for the CGT trade union, Charles Foulard, told BFM television that three people were injured in the skirmish.

Despite the government’s efforts to conquer union resistance, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said it would take several days to end gasoline shortages.

The government began unblocking fuel depots days ago and is allowing tanker trucks on the road Sunday, when they are normally forbidden. It has ordered oil companies to pool fuel to ensure gas stations are stocked.

The prime minister convened oil industry executives Friday to review the country’s lagging fuel supplies.

The head of the national petroleum industry body, Jean-Louis Schilansky, says it is struggling to import fuel to make up for the shortfall, because strikers are also blockading two key oil terminals, in Le Havre and Marseille. Dozens of tankers remained anchored in the waters off Marseille, unable to unload.

“The problem isn’t so much finding the oil; it is getting it into the country,” he said. “If the depots and refineries remain blocked, we will not make it.”

Nevertheless, Schilansky insisted that France has weeks or months of fuel reserves.

Marc Touati, head economist for Global Equities, was somber about the consequences of prolonged protests by the fuel sector, saying such a scenario could wipe out economic growth of between 0.1 percentage point and 0.2 percentage point. The government predicts economic growth of 2 percent next year, after 1.5 percent in 2010.

Violence around student protests have added a new dimension to the volatile mix.

“It is not troublemakers who will have the last word in a democracy,” Sarkozy told workers at a factory in the Eure-et-Loir region, promising to find and punish rioters. “If we stop companies like you from working, who will pay?” Information for this article was contributed by Elaine Ganley, Alexis Duclos, Angela Charlton, Greg Keller, Jonathan Shenfield and Oleg Cetinic of The Associated Press, by Steven Erlanger and Alan Cowell of The New York Times, by Helene Fouquet of Bloomberg News and by Siegfried Mortkowitz of Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/23/2010

Upcoming Events