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Sarkozy Stands Firm Despite Massive Disruptions

French President Sarkozy's drive to force France to reform remains firm despite eight days of massive, crippling strikes. Talks began on Wednesday with representatives of the transport unions. German commentators are placing their bets on "Super Sarko."

Wednesday marked day eight of widespread strikes throughout France. In the latest development, long-awaited negotiations have begun between striking transit workers and government transit authorities. Despite the promise of a return to normalcy, the reality is still grim. Transportation service is still only at partial strength. Only about half of the 700 normally scheduled fast trains are moving and only one of Paris's four Metro lines is in operation, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, arson attacks on high-speed lines have been described as being "coordinated sabotage."

The strikes have caused chaos for commuters and damage to the economy that has been described as "incalculable, probably gigantic" by Laurence Parisot, the head of the employers' federation MEDEF. Nevertheless, opinion polls point to continued strong public support for Sarkozy's reform proposals and firm stance and there are reports that some workers are trickling back to their transit jobs.

On Tuesday, 5 million public servants joined transit workers on strike for a day of labor chaos, which disrupted air traffic, postal service and even weather forecasts. France's transport unions are trying to protect their special pension rights, which allow them to retire earlier than employees in other sectors. Public servants are protesting Sarkozy's planned reductions in their numbers, allegedly low wages and an increasing cost of living.

Sarkozy and Prime Minister François Fillon are standing firm, saying that the reforms must go through. Sarkozy has kept a low profile throughout the strikes, although he appeared before photographers Tuesday while welcoming Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to talks in Paris.

German commentators generally believe Sarkozy will weather the storm:

Right-leaning Die Welt writes:

"Sarkozy is no man of steel or lover of conflict. He looks for majorities, speaks with his opponents and strives to bring them to his side. And he knows that the majority of the French are behind him ... The most recent polls from October show that 56 percent of the Frence are behind his course of action."

"Sarkozy consciously chose to get in a fight with the railway unions and those privileged by the retirement system. He knows that the majority of the French can no longer afford to have 1.6 million employees go into retirement at 50, often with 75 percent of their final salary. This is a joke that costs the nation €5 billion ($7.4 billion) every year. The fact that various unions are joining together in battle isn't something for Sarkozy to worry about either. Sarkozy hopes to forge the resentment of the silent majority toward the unions into a sword. Hardly anyone watching the images currently on TV would believe it, but France's labor force is less unionized than in any other country in the EU. Now, for the first time, the silent majority seems ready to point that out. More and more anti-strike demonstrators are appearing who feel harassed by the strikers. And mayors in the suburbs of Paris are organizing busses to get their inhabitants passed the strikers and to work."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"The French government has failed to prevent several strikes from coalescing into a type of general strike of public service workers. In this respect, this story -- billed as a power struggle -- has not run its course as it was planned in the political script. There is a reason why Sarkozy, who is usually eager to be right in the middle of everything, is standing in the background and ceding the spotlight to his labor minister. This is actually a fairly shrewd strategy in the sense that it prevents the conflict from being completely shrouded with the aura of 'grande politique,' but rather (it appears) -- in a wider sense -- as a wage dispute. The solutions that will allow both sides to save some face presumably lie in this: The government needs to show that it can carry out its reforms, and the unions need to hammer out concessions to satisfy their base. A similar thing happened regarding the 35-hour work week. It was left intact -- but riddled with loopholes."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Sarkozy has no cause for alarm. The risk that France's president will lose the ritualized power struggle with public service employees is very low. And for this reason, the risk is very high that he will increase the erroneous old French belief in the supreme power of the state."

"Sarkozy has properly worked out his plan to limit the old vested rights of public servants. First, he singled out the outrageous retirement privileges of railway workers, knowing full well that they cause a lot of resentment. This fact also leads to the state in which the rail unions are at odds with each other over their strategy. For this reason, Sarkozy's government will win this conflict, and all the more so because it appears willing to make minor concessions."

"It's also possible to cope with the protest by the other public service employees, who always bristle at each and every even minor change. Sarkozy and Fillon were handed a clear mandate for reform in the elections earlier this year, and that means that what is most important in France is that they have the assignment of closing the gap between employees in private industries and the public employees, who have been pampered for decades."

"Long gone is the solidarity that only 10 years ago each and every level of society felt with public service employees. Only the people profiting from it still cling to the theory that the best situation for everybody is when things are going well for the state and its employees."

"So, there remains a paradox. The majority of French people still have it in their heads that the state is not only responsible for guaranteeing a living wage but also everyone's economic well-being. And Sarkozy is doing all he can to affirm this supposition. He'll soon be presenting a plan on how to end creeping losses in purchasing power. Temporary price reductions, like the ones he once arranged as economics minister with the country's major retail chains, cannot be a solution."

"The president will do all he can to retain his image as Super Sarko. He will meet people's expectations, and he will dispel the widespread malaise in (France's) economy. But if he also manages to prevail in the current labor battles, he will solidify belief in the guiding power of the state. That could be catastrophic, too, because France will not be spared from the forces of globalization."

-- Josh Ward, 3 p.m. CET