France's Valls promises firm response to refinery strikes amid anti-reform showdown

Record ID: 102184

  • Title: France's Valls promises firm response to refinery strikes amid anti-reform showdown
  • Date: 24th May 2016
  • Summary: GRANDPUITS, FRANCE (MAY 23, 2016) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF WORKERS AT TOTAL REFINERY VARIOUS OF TOTAL REFINERY
  • Embargoed: 8th June 2016 09:44
  • Keywords: Oil petrol gas refinery France strike labour Valls blockade police
  • Location: JERUSALEM, ISRAEL & GRANDPUITS, MORMANT, FOS-SUR-MER & PARIS, FRANCE
  • City: JERUSALEM, ISRAEL & GRANDPUITS, MORMANT, FOS-SUR-MER & PARIS, FRANCE
  • Country: France
  • Reuters ID: LVA0074J629TZ
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned on Tuesday (May 24) that the hardline CGT labour union, behind pickets attempting to choke off fuel supply sites, would receive a firm response from the government after French police using water cannon and tear gas broke up a strike that was blocking access to a large oil refinery in the southern port area of Marseille in a government versus union showdown over contested labour law reforms.
    The police operation outside the Fos-sur-Mer refinery, which belongs to U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp, took place as scores of fuel stations ran dry and the government warned the industrial action would not be tolerated.
    Emmanuel Lepine of the CGT union said about 40 busloads of riot police took part in an operation "of unprecedented violence" outside the Fos-sur-Mer refinery.
    The pre-dawn police operation marked an escalation in the standoff between President Francois Hollande's government and the CGT, which is organising rolling strikes at oil refineries, ports and railways.
    The CGT announced that strikes had now spread to all eight of France's refineries and that output would fall by least 50 percent.
    At issue a year from presidential and legislative elections is a reform Hollande hopes will encourage new jobs and help tackle an unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent.
    Opponents, including the CGT and a youth protest movement, say the reform will unravel some of the most protective labour regulations in the euro zone, allowing firms to lay off staff more easily in hard economic times and by providing further exemptions from national rules on pay and working conditions.
    The dispute has shone a spotlight on the battle for influence within the CGT, once France's biggest trade union group but an organisation whose power has shown signs of waning.
    The pickets around fuel supply depots started to bite last weekend, sparking rationing at many of the roughly 12,000 petrol stations nationwide in response to delivery problems and a surge in demand due to panic-buying by motorists.
    Emergency stocks are sufficient to keep the country's fuel stations in operation for up to two months if the government chose to tap into those supplies, but Valls had already warned that the pickets would not be tolerated for long.
    Union members at French oil and gas company Total's 101,000 barrels-per-day Grandpuits refinery voted on Monday (May 23) to shut down production as part of the ongoing protest over the reforms.
    The refinery, Total's smallest, but the closest to the French capital, has been running at minimum output levels since last week.
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