French pension reforms invites union wrath

Indian policy makers are not the only ones to contemplate raising the retirement age for the private sector to 60, due to the mounting deficit in the employment pension scheme corpus (See: Committee recommends raising retirement age in private sector to 60)

In France, President Nicholas Sarkozy's unpopular move on pension reforms and raising the retirement age has invited the wrath of the unions with nation-wide protests and transport disruption.

Rail traffic and public transport remained disrupted today with workers staging a one-day nationwide strike to protest the pension reform bill of president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Major trade unions in the country coordinated massive street protests to send a message to the president to drop his plans for raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 by the year 2018. The measure would be presented in parliament later today.

The strike started late yesterday with the cancellation of all scheduled night trains, domestic and international, as railway workers walked off from their jobs.

According to the national railway network SNCF of about 40 per cent of all scheduled high-speed TGV trains as few as one in four trains were operational.