French workers stage nationwide protests

Factory workers and civil servants headed up marches across France on Saturday in a new union-led protest over President Nicolas Sarkozy's handling of the economic crisis. France's eight main unions staged their fifth day of action this year to demand stronger steps to cushion families from a global downturn that has plunged the country into recession and sent unemployment soaring.
But union bosses said turnout by 2:00 pm (1200 GMT) was far lower than on May Day, when up to a million people took to the streets, amid signs the movement is running out of steam ahead of the traditional French summer break. "Turnout is lower than we had hoped," Bernard Thibault, leader of France's biggest union the CGT, admitted as the Paris demo set off from Place de la Bastille, the biggest of some 150 marches taking place across France. The head of the CFDT union, Francois Chereque, conceded the day "will not be a success in terms of numbers."
"What matters most today is to make a splash, to say before the summer and our meeting with the president that we have to go further, that we have to move things forwards," Chereque said. Rail employees, hospital staff and university lecturers angry at reforms joined in the protests, and strikes kept national newspapers off the shelves, but overall disruption was minimal with trains running normally.
In south-eastern Avignon, workers protesting at the closure of an historic paper mill by US group Schweitzer-Mauduit led a march of around 1,000 people, while 500 marched in the port of Toulon. Unions said 13,000 people had joined large marches in south-western Toulouse and Bordeaux, including workers protesting at the closure of car parts supplier Molex, but police put the figure much lower at around 3,500.
Across western France, unions said up to 6,500 people in total marched in Rennes, Brest, Poitiers and Le Mans where unions said Renault factory workers joined the rally. Police put the figure lower at around 3,500. Workers angry at job cuts in a local glassworks headed up a march of 700 people in northern Reims, while up to 2,000 took part in half a dozen rallies in eastern France, from the mustard capital Dijon to Colmar, unions said.