French government, union remain deadlocked amid wave of protests

PanARMENIAN.Net - The French government and CGT union on Sunday, May 30 dug in their heels amid a wave of strikes and angry street protests against labor reforms, but there were fresh phone contacts between the two sides, Reuters said.

The CGT warned it would continue its campaign of stoppages and demonstrations to pressure the government to scrap plans to make it easier for companies to hire and fire workers.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was quoted as saying on Sunday that he was determined not to join a long list of politicians who have conceded defeat to protesters.

"If we gave in to the street and to CGT because we were obsessed over the short term by 2017 (presidential elections), we would lose everything," Valls told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.

In the mid-1990s Prime Minister Alain Juppe triggered France's worst unrest in decades because he would not budge on pension reform but he eventually backed down after weeks of industrial action and protests.

The dispute has sent Valls' approval rating down to 24 percent, its lowest since he became Prime Minister, according to a poll conducted by BVA for Orange et iTELE. Juppe resigned as prime minister in 1996 after his rating dropped below 25 percent.

The government is under pressure to find a solution to the latest stand-off before the June 10 start of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, which the Force Ouvriere (FO) union had directly threatened to disrupt on Friday.