French unions testing strength with strike

Union leaders aimed to put some 2 million protesters onto the streets and severely disrupt rail and air traffic, schools and hospitals with stoppages that began on Monday evening.

“Tomorrow will be totally decisive. The number of demonstrators will determine more or less the changes the government will make in the reform,” Francois Chereque, leader of the CFDT trade union, said on France 3 television.

Opinion polls show two-thirds of voters think Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 and make people work longer for a pension is unfair and support the day of protest, but two-thirds also think the strikes will make no difference.

“Everything this government does economically is perceived by public opinion as unjust and ineffective,” said Gael Sliman, director of the BVA Opinion polling institute.

The conservative government says the reform is essential to balance pension accounts by 2018, reduce the public deficit and preserve France's top-notch AAA credit rating.

The strikes are expected to force the cancellation of half of rail and underground services and short-haul Air France flights, and 25 percent of Paris flights by other carriers, as well as to close many schools. But most private sector companies will not be affected.

The labor unrest mirrors action in several European countries against austerity measures imposed to reduce budget deficits swollen by the 2008-9 economic crisis. Governments from Greece, Spain, Italy and Romania have faced down strikers to impose painful pay and public spending cuts.

On the eve of what may be the biggest protests since Sarkozy won office in 2007, ministers insisted the pension bill's key principles were non-negotiable but signaled concessions on secondary issues such as earlier retirement for those in physically demanding jobs or who began work at an early age.

Most major European countries have an official retirement age of 65, and some, such as Germany and Britain, plan to raise it gradually to 67 or beyond. But the real effective retirement age in France is similar to that of its neighbors, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

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