Truck drivers' strike could prevent EMU targets being attained

AFTER 11 days of the French truck drivers' strike, tempers are fraying. Tension reached such heights in Calais yesterday that the French drivers finally agreed to let stranded British, Spanish and Italian drivers on to a Britain bound ferry.

Earlier in the day, drivers had accused one another of stealing fuel and food from each others' lorries. "It's almost like hostages being released," said Mr Adam Wurf, spokesman for the British Freight Transport Association.

As the ferry sailed out of Calais, Spanish drivers bought drinks for their British colleagues.

In France the mood was hardly celebratory. Tens of thousands of lorries stood in 250 roadblocks around the country. Snow and sleet made the waiting even more miserable.

One car driver was slightly injured when he tried to force his way through a roadblock. Earlier this week a German truck driver received a head wound from a metal bar when he tried to cross a barricade in the Saone et Loire region. He is now in hospital in Dijon.

Two thousand of France's 18,000 service stations have run out of petrol. The truck drivers are blocking access to all of France's 13 oil refineries and about half of its 400 oil storage depots.

Supermarkets are running short of, supplies, especially fresh fruit, vegetables and dairy products. A market in Marseilles said it would have no food left by Monday.

The Gruss travelling circus stranded on the highway between Lyons and Grenoble and is short of fresh meat to feed its tigers.

THE truckers strike is also affecting France's European partners. The British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, said he was horrified and called in the French ambassador after 850 British lorry drivers were stranded in France.

A German car factory in Spain said it will have to close for lack of spare parts. Petrol stations near the French border in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy seem to be the only beneficiaries.

In Ventimiglia, Italian stations quadrupled their normal business as French motorists flocked to buy petrol, many of them loaded down with jerrycans.

The French government mediator, Mr Roger Cros, gave up after 70 hours of marathon negotiations between haulage bosses and trade unionists. The drivers obtained one of their chief demands, retirement at 55 instead of 60.

But there is still no agreement on payment for waiting during loading and unloading. And the truckers rejected the transport companies offer of a 1 per cent pay rise. The drivers want an average 23 per cent.

A somewhat exasperated Mr Bernard Pons, the Minister for Transport, said the government might settle the dispute by decree. He did not elaborate, and it is not clear what the consequences of a governmental decree would be.

The Defence Minister had said he hoped "it would not be necessary" to use force to clear the blockades. The army deployed tanks to move similar barricades in July 1992.

"The dialogue will continue," Mr Pons said. "I want it to continue without the roadblocks."

The trucking strike is the most serious crisis encountered by Prime Minister Alain Juppe's government since a 24 day transport strike one year ago.

The knock on economic effects of that strike lasted through the Christmas season and into the new year in the end, the railway workers who started it obtained what they wanted.

The government dropped plans to restructure the national railway company and gave up trying to bring railway pension plans into line with the private sector.

The lesson was not lost on the truck drivers this month. If you make yourself a big enough nuisance, French unions have learned, you will, get your way in the end.

THE Juppe government is at a moral disadvantage when it asks French workers to tighten their belts after many officials have been implicated in corruption scandals. And the truck drivers had a legitimate grievance a November 1994 agreement to limit their working hours to 60 per week was widely violated.

A public opinion poll this week showed that 74 per cent of French people support the drivers. The strikers have tried not to antagonise the public, but they must know there is a risk of a backlash as heating oil runs out and grocery store shelves become empty.

The French cabinet's biggest fear is of contagion. Already Air France and Air Inter have held a 48 hour solidarity strike with the truckers. Union officials are asking railway and bus drivers to follow suit.

The truckers' success over early retirement is expected to encourage other French men in difficult jobs to demand similar conditions.

The administration is helping to finance retirement at 55 for the lorry drivers, who are private sector workers, a dangerous precedent that could further deplete government coffers.

The government had predicted a poor economic growth rate of 1.3 per cent this year and, more optimistically, up to 2.5 per cent in 1997. Economists say the truckers' strike is not yet serious enough to affect these figures.

But if deeper paralysis of the economy sets in, Mr Juppe could have a hard time meeting his obligations for budgetary restraint under the Maastricht Treaty. And European Monetary Union without France is hard to envisage.