Hundreds of thousands of workers marched in cities across France on Thursday to protest government plans to raise the minimum retirement age of 60, a crucial part of any reform of the costly pension system.
Trade union leaders said the marches were the first step in a long struggle to defend the retirement age, which was reduced in a trademark reform of late Socialist President Francois Mitterrand.
The current government, struggling to bring its swollen deficit under control, says it has no choice but to raise it.
The unions gauged national turnout at almost one million, well above the 800,000 they said joined similar protests on March 23. Police, which estimated the March protests at a far smaller 320,000, had not provided a national estimate yet for Thursday's marches.
'This important day has been a success'
The powerful CGT union said 90,000 marched in rainy Paris streets, many under umbrellas. The police estimate was 22,000.
"This important day has been a success," CGT Secretary General Bernard Thibault at the start of the Paris protest.
"If the government goes ahead" with the reform, he said, "we will take other measures. We'll adapt to whatever calendar the government wants to impose on us."
Public services reported between 10 and 20 percent of staff went on strike in schools, the post office and national telecoms provider France Telecom. But transport services were working almost normally, with only a few flights and trains hit by staff walkouts.
"Only a show of force on the streets can defend the 60-year retirement age and the social achievements that (President) Nicolas Sarkozy is methodically attacking," Thibault said.
Labour Minister Eric Woerth said on Wednesday he saw no convincing alternative to raising the retirement age and Budget Minister Francois Baroin said on Thursday a pension reform bill would be debated in parliament after the summer break.
Sarkozy added a partisan sting to the debate on Wednesday by saying, to loud protests from the opposition Socialists, that France would have "much fewer problems" if Mitterrand had not dropped the retirement age from 65 to 60 in 1983.
Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry joined the protesters in Lille, where she is mayor. Large marches were also reported from Marseille, Rouen, Bordeaux, Rennes and other cities, all with higher turnouts than in March.
Funding gap of around $86 billion
According to a report last month by the government-appointed Pensions Advisory Council, France's pension system faces a funding gap of around 70 billion euros ($86 billion) in 2030 and that could balloon to more than 100 billion euros by 2050.
French media say Paris is considering upping the retirement age to 62 or 63 years and extending the period during which contributions have to be paid to 42 years from 40.5 years by 2030. Sarkozy's office said no decisions had been taken as yet.
Sarkozy has singled out an overhaul of the pension system as his government's key reform project this year but his plans have already aroused strong opposition from unions.
The CGT's Thibault said further protests could come before the summer break. CFDT union leader Francois Chereque said: "Things will happen over time. One protest will not suffice."
The transport chaos that often accompanies strikes in France was mostly absent on Thursday, partly because the reform plan would not touch costly special pension schemes for transport workers, a powerful sector that brought an earlier conservative government to its knees in 1995 when it tried to reform them.
"The government's plan is not the toughest that could be, despite what the banners will say," the business daily Les Echos wrote in an editorial.
