{Paris police fire tear gas as “Black Tuesday” protesters, including taxi drivers, block roads and throw smoke bombs.}<\/p>\n
Paris police fired tear gas and taxi drivers lit bonfires on a major highway during nationwide strikes and protests over working conditions and competition from non-traditional services such as Uber.<\/p>\n
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls agreed to an emergency meeting with taxi drivers on Tuesday afternoon, in an apparent attempt to defuse tensions.<\/p>\n
The “Black Tuesday” protests are the latest challenge to the Socialist government as it tries to modernise the economy and find France’s place in an increasingly globalised, online marketplace.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of flights were cancelled as air traffic controllers joined civil servants, hospital workers and teachers for the day of strikes.<\/p>\n
At Orly airport, one protester was injured in the leg when a shuttle bus forced its way through a blockade. Police said the bus driver was arrested.<\/p>\n
About 300 taxi drivers, furious over upstart competitors such as Uber, blocked the capital’s ring road at a key intersection in the west of the city, lighting fires and throwing smoke bombs.<\/p>\n
Dozens of taxi drivers tried to march on to an eight-lane bypass, but police pushed them back with tear gas. <\/p>\n
“Today our survival is at stake, we are fed up of meetings and negotiations,” said Ibrahima Sylla, spokesman of the Taxis de France collective.<\/p>\n
Nineteen protesters were arrested from a total of 1,200 drivers on strike around the capital, police said.<\/p>\n
“There is a right to protest … even during a state of emergency,” said Valls. “But violence is unacceptable.”<\/p>\n
Adding to the chaos, one in five flights in and out of Paris – affecting both Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports – was cancelled because of a strike by air traffic controllers over pay and conditions.<\/p>\n
Air France said it would operate all its long-haul flights and more than 80 percent of its short and medium-haul flights in France and elsewhere in Europe, but that “last-minute delays or cancellations cannot be ruled out.”<\/p>\n
Budget airline Ryanair said that it had cancelled more than 200 flights, and EasyJet had cut 35 flights, mostly within France but also affecting Italy, Switzerland and Spain.<\/p>\n
The taxi strike could mean access to airports in Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Marseilles was “greatly disrupted”, Air France warned.<\/p>\n
France banned Uber’s low-cost UberPOP service – which used unlicensed drivers – a year ago, but taxi dispatchers in Paris say business has still shrunk by 20 to 30 percent.<\/p>\n
Uber flouted the UberPOP ban for several months, triggering a spate of violent protests in June.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco-based company finally shut down the low-cost service in July after two of its French bosses were arrested and charged with “misleading commercial practices [and] complicity in the illegal exercise of the taxi profession”.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile some 5.6 million civil servants were told to down tools to protest against labour reforms proposed last September affecting pay and career advancement.<\/p>\n
The striking unions – who led up to 120 demonstrations across France on what the daily Le Parisien newspaper dubbed “Black Tuesday” – also claim they are protesting against job losses totalling some 150,000 since 2007 and say the hospital sector is especially in need of new jobs.<\/p>\n
Source:Al Jazeera:[Flights cancelled as French protests turn violent->http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/01\/france-protests-160126140209452.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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