FRANCE: Striking French refinery workers ordered to work as petrol shortages continue

Record ID: 572879

  • Title: FRANCE: Striking French refinery workers ordered to work as petrol shortages continue
  • Date: 23rd October 2010
  • Summary: GRANDPUITS, FRANCE (OCTOBER 22, 2010) (REUTERS) (** AUDIO AS INCOMING*** ) VARIOUS OF REFINERY ENTRANCE AFTER EARLIER MORNING SCUFFLES
  • Embargoed: 7th November 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Domestic Politics,Energy
  • Reuters ID: LVA45ZKPP6LKE8ZMMZ9IY6QC6FEW
  • Story Text: Petrol remains scarce in France as officials requisition workers and installations at a major refinery near the French capital.
    As Parisians continued to face fuel shortages the French government moved to break the blockade at a major refinery outside of the capital.
    As French energy minister Jean Louis Borloo explained on a morning radio show on Friday (October 22), workers had been "requisitioned" -- ordered legally to work -- or face, as his interviewer said "up to five years in jail."
    Earlier police had clashed with striking refinery workers at the Total Grandpuits oil refinery near Paris as they attempted to break the workers blockade.
    The French government requisitioned the refinery in the early hours of the morning but workers continued to block the entrance with a human chain. Police used force to remove them. Local media reported that three people were injured in the scuffles.
    At petrol stations in Paris signs reading "empty" and "no petrol" could be seen. Travellers remained patient but some said they were starting to worry.
    "If we have another week of hassle, if it can make the government reflect, I can put up with that," one woman said as she filled up her car.
    "It irritates me a little. I've just got back from England and I saw what was happening there and we're really not taken seriously at all. It worries me for France," another lady at the petrol station said.
    French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants the reform -- which would raise the minimum age of retirement to 62 from 60 and the maximum age for a full pension to 67 from 65 -- to be passed quickly in the hope that, in becoming law, it will take the steam out of protests.
    The government resorted to a special measure to speed the reform bill's passage through the Senate, with a vote expected later on Friday as pressure built on Sarkozy to end the long-running impasse with the unions.
    French unions dug in their heels on Friday with further strike action and a call for two more days of protests as a final vote on Sarkozy's unpopular pension reform drew near in the Senate.
    Signalling their determination to keep fighting, even after the reform has become law, France's six main unions called late on Thursday (October 21) for a seventh and eighth day of protest action against the reform on October 28 and November 6.
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