Hard-line unions dig in despite call from prime minister Edouard Philippe to return to work
Passengers wait to board trains at Gare de Lyon railway station in Paris on Friday. Picture: AFP/MARTIN BUREAUCancelled trains, packed roads, frazzled nerves: Travellers scrambled across France on Friday to begin Christmas vacations upended by a weeks-long transport strike over a pensions overhaul that unions have vowed to defeat.
“We’ve seen twice as many requests in some regions,” mainly Paris and southwest France, said Robert Ostermann, France director for Europcar. Taxi companies in Paris had already stopped taking Friday reservations early this week as many metro lines remain shut, while Twitter is awash with irate Uber users forced to pay two to three times normal rates.
President Emmanuel Macron wants to forge the country’s 42 separate pension regimes into a single points-based system, saying it would be fairer and more transparent. That would do away with legacy schemes that offer early retirement and other advantages to mainly public-sector workers, not least train drivers who can retire as early as 52.
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