French strike fever spreads as Macron's opponents push for confrontation
French railway workers and civil servants will next week join oil refinery staff with work stoppages, raising fears that anger over the rising cost of living could lead to a winter of discontent.
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Railway staff and civil servants represented by the militant CGT union, the biggest in the public sector, will stop work next Tuesday, with several labour groups calling for a national day of strikes.
The CGT is demanding higher wages for railway workers but also wants to protest government efforts to break the strike by oil refinery workers.
The government has used emergency powers to compel some striking refinery employees to return to their jobs to release fuel held inside blockaded facilities.
Third week of strikes
Six of France's seven refineries have been affected by strikes that are now in their third week.
"The time for a confrontation has arrived," left-wing opposition parliamentarian Clementine Autain of the far-left France Unbowed party told France 2 television on Thursday.
Greens lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau said on Wednesday she hoped the refinery standoff would be "the spark that begins a general strike".
Not all unions have joined the call for strikes next Tuesday, however, with the country's biggest, the CFDT, opting out.
Left-wing political parties are to hold a rally to protest against the policies of President Emmanuel Macron and the rising cost of living on Sunday.
Emergency measures
The government has been requisitioning some fuel depot workers, forcing them to return to work or risk prosecution.
Staff were constrained to work at an ExxonMobil depot on Wednesday, and a TotalEnergies site in northern France was requisitioned Thursday.
Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne's office said the emergency measures were justified because of a "real economic threat" in northern France, which relies heavily on agriculture, fishing and industry.
The unions have reacted furiously to the government intervention.
"What we are seeing here is the Macronian dictatorship," CGT official Benjamin Tange told the AFP news agency. The strike, he said, arose out of anger which had built up over several months, even years.
Those close to Macron allege that there has been a concerted effort by several elected representatives of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed movement to use the refinery strike and resulting chaos to bring the government down.
Cracks emerge in governing group
Potentially more serious politically is the emergence of a division within the presidential party on the taxation of the enormous additional profits made by energy companies because of the global surge in fuel prices.
French multinational TotalEnergies recorded profits of 10,4 billion in the first six months of 2022. The government has resisted calls for a special level of taxation on those so-called "superprofits".
Daily newspaper Le Monde reports that 19 members of the presidential party voted in favour of a temporary 5 percent increase in the level of taxation of oil company profits, supporting the Nupes green and social alliance and the extreme right National Rally.
Borne is to meet the leaders of the parliamentary majority over the weekend to discuss strategy on retirement reform, another issue guaranteed to provoke an angry reaction from trade unions and other opposition groups.
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