France swept by nationwide strikes on ‘Black Tuesday’

The country saw nationwide simultaneous strikes by taxi drivers, air traffic controllers, civil servants, hospital workers and teachers

The Paris police fired tear gas and taxi drivers lit bonfires on a major highway on Tuesday amid nationwide strikes and protests over working conditions and competition from non-traditional services such as Uber.

Tempers flared as striking taxi drivers blocked key roads and set fire to tyres on a “black Tuesday” that saw simultaneous strikes by air traffic controllers, civil servants, hospital workers and teachers.

At Orly airport, one protester was injured in the leg when a shuttle bus forced its way through a blockade. The police said the bus driver was arrested.

Some 300 taxi drivers furious over competition from non-licensed private hire cabs blocked the capital’s ring road at a key intersection in the west of the city. “Today our survival is at stake, we are fed up of meetings and negotiations,” said Ibrahima Sylla, spokesman of the Taxis de France collective.

Nineteen protesters were arrested, the police said.

Adding to the airport chaos, one in five flights in and out of Orly as well as Paris’ main air hub, Charles de Gaulle, were cancelled because of a strike by air traffic controllers over pay and conditions.

However, no last-minute cancellations were reported early Tuesday, an airport spokesman said, adding: “All passengers whose flights were cancelled were informed by the airlines.”

Air France had said it would operate all of its long-haul flights and more than 80 per cent of its short- and medium-haul flights in France and elsewhere in Europe, but that “last-minute delays or cancellations cannot be ruled out.”

Noting that the controllers’ strike coincided with the taxi drivers’ action, the airline warned its passengers that access to the Paris airports, as well as those of Toulouse and Bordeaux in the southwest and Marseille in the south, could be “greatly disrupted”.

Budget airline EasyJet said it had cancelled 35 flights, mainly within France but also to or from Switzerland, Italy and Spain.

The controllers’ unions want to be exempted from proposed changes to how salaries are calculated, which they say would hurt their purchasing power.

On the ground, the police said some 1,200 taxi drivers were protesting in various parts of Paris, while their colleagues also disrupted traffic in Toulouse, northern Lille and southern Marseille. They are seeking compensation for business lost to taxi app company Uber and similar firms.

Meanwhile some 5.6 million civil servants have been called to down tools to protest against labour reforms proposed in September 2015 affecting pay and career advancement. Kindergarten and primary school teachers were striking on Tuesday for higher pay, with about a third, or 1,00,000, expected to take part, according to their union, which predicts a stay-away rate of up to 45 per cent in Paris.