November 25, 2007	Sunday	Ziqa’ad 14, 1428

PARIS: In the 5am darkness outside a bus depot in southern Paris the diehard 20-man picket-line stood warming their hands by a makeshift fire, contemplating the future of France.

“We’re the human stones ready to be lobbed at the government. We’re the last line of resistance to protect France from neo-liberalism, capitalism and the end of society,” said Herve Berthome, a bus driver, whose father used to reminisce about striking in May 1968.

Berthome, 43, would normally be driving the 84 bus from the Pantheon through Paris’s Left Bank, humming his favourite Genesis songs to himself. But instead he and a handful of fellow drivers — the grassroots of the powerful, communist-linked CGT union — were holding their ground in a transport strike that has gridlocked France and proved the defining moment of Nicolas Sarkozy’s promised new era.

By the eighth morning of the strike this week Berthome had already forfeited EUR800 in docked wages. Some of the strikers with families and children were beginning to feel the strain. “Our wages are so low anyway that we can only shop in discount stores — if we have to live off noodles to continue the strike, so be it,” said one father of two. After more than a decade driving buses Berthome earns around EUR1,800 a month and is currently able to retire at 54. Sarkozy wants to reform the special pensions deals that allow train and bus drivers — and certain other workers including Paris opera stagehands — to stop work earlier than other state employees on favourable terms.

But to Berthome and his comrades the pension fight was round one in a bigger battle. He was inspired by Britain’s miners’ strike, Ken Loach’s film on the horrors of privatised British railways, the film The Full Monty and Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko, which contrasts the nightmares of America’s healthcare system with the benefits of France’s ever present state. Berthome feared France’s social system was going to be dismantled, and pensions were only the start.

“Sarkozy is our Thatcher,” he said. “He’s a provocateur, he plays one France against the other. He’s ready to serve his class and his cronies, the rich who eat caviar off a golden spoon.”

The strikers gave a prolonged honk of an antique bus klaxon, but there was little danger of waking up the neighbours.

For the past week millions of French people have been waking at 4am and resorting to increasingly desperate methods of transport, from roller skates to quad bikes, children’s scooters to hitch-hiking, to try to get to work despite their crippled buses and trains.

Morning rush hour would often see 300-mile tailbacks across France as people took to their cars. Police had to force back commuters from overcrowded Paris train platforms. A surge in bike and scooter accidents hit those braving the roads. Others slept at work.

When Sarkozy promised a new work ethic as the president “of the France that gets up early”, people rising before dawn due to strike chaos was not the image he had in mind.

Outside France commentators deemed this “black November” Sarkozy’s Thatcher moment — a chance for the new, modernising president to break France’s forces for social and economic immobilism.

France has often been said to be impossible to modernise, never ready for reform but always ready for a revolution. Before his election Sarkozy promised to “liquidate the legacy” of the May 1968 protests.

The recent days of strikes cost France around EUR400m a day. Industry faced a shortage of materials as freight trains stopped, hotels and restaurants lost businesses, boutiques said their 50 per cent drop in trade had not been seen since the May 1968 protests.

On Tuesday civil servants staged their own separate 24-hour strike over pay and conditions and students blockaded faculties over university funding reforms.

The transport strike limped on for nine days with some Paris lines still disrupted yesterday. A hard core of students continue to resist, with the Sorbonne closed until Monday after violent clashes yesterday when some students tried to blockade it.

But both the right and left his week said parallels with Thatcher were inexact. Sarkozy has been cautious, quietly offering concessions that unions will find hard to resist — the SNCF railway management has proposed a EUR90m a year financial package to compensate staff for the extra two and a half years they will be required to work.

Negotiations will last a month. Rail and bus workers threaten to resume their strike the week before Christmas, when it could cause huge disruption.

“Frankly I think it went a lot better here in France than with Thatcher,” said Sarkozy’s aide, Patrick Devedjian.

When Sarkozy leaves on a China trip today he will be quietly hopeful that by Christmas his first pension reforms are likely to be achieved, opening the way for his tougher social reforms next year.—Dawn/Guardian News Service