Chaos in France as transport workers strike continues

Transport workers shut down most trains across France for a second full day today, once again causing chaos for passengers.

Both the state train authority, the SNCF, where staff went on indefinite strike on Tuesday, and the Paris transport system said conditions had improved.

The SNCF said that 150 fast trains out of 700 were running this morning, compared to 90 the day before, while the RATP which runs Paris public transport said that only one Metro line was fully shut down.

The streets of Paris were clogged with pedestrians cyclists trying to get to work. The city’s new rent-a-bike service was especially popular.

Authorities have said the Eurostar train between Paris and London will not to be affected by the strike.

Meanwhile the government was waiting for a response from the unions to its offer to negotiate a way out of the strikes which are the first major challenge to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to modernise France with vast reforms.

Mr Sarkozy wants the strike to end “as quickly as possible,” his spokesman said last night.

Employment Minister Xavier Bertrand, in a letter to seven union chiefs, said negotiations should commence “rapidly” and be completed in a month.

However authorities made clear that the principle of reforming special retirement benefits for transport and utilities workers, in place for more than 60 years, was not up for negotiation.

“The president of the republic has always considered that there is more to be gained for all parties in negotiation than in conflict,” a spokesman for Mr Sarkozy said. The strikes “must end as quickly as possible in the interest of passengers.”

But the head of the Workers Force union, Jean-Claude Mailly declared: “Everything must be on the table,” he said Wednesday night.

Changing the system of special retirement benefits for some state workers is emblematic of Mr Sarkozy’s bid to sweep away what he sees as obsolete practices.

Power workers and employees of opera houses are among those who would lose special benefits and are also taking action.