Unions stage final street march against French labor law reform

09/15/2016 5:58

PARIS, Sept 15 (Reuters) - French labor union leaders vowed on Thursday to keep fighting a change of labor law that will make hiring and firing easier but acknowledged months of street demonstrations against the now-adopted legislation were at an end as support fades.

Ahead of protests in Paris and other cities later on Thursday, the union leaders who led wave after wave of often violence-marred street marches in the past six months, said they would continues to fight the law, but not in the streets.

"We won't give up the fight. We're not going to have another wave of demonstrations but there are other ways of fighting the labor law," Jean-Claude Mailly, head of the Force Ouvriere union, told French public TV channel France 2.

"This law will be the chewing gum that sticks to the soles of the government's shoes."

Mailly and Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT union, said they hoped legal challenges would force the withdrawal of the new law.

They said they intended to challenge application decrees - documents that spell out exactly how the law applies on the ground.

The new law, forced through parliament in July by the government in the face of a rebellion by ruling party lawmakers, is designed to make France's rigid labor market more flexible, in part by allowing firms to tailor pay and work terms to their needs more easily.

Seven months before the first round of a wide-open presidential election, President Francois Hollande is still plagued by near double-digit unemployment and hopes the new legislation will help lower the jobless rate.

Although Hollande has hinted clearly his intent to run, the president has previously said he would only enter the race if he could claim to have made inroads against unemployment.

At their peak, the street protests brought close to 400,000 people into the streets last March but turnout has steadily fallen as public appetite to fight the law in the street wanes.

The unions say the law will undermine high standards of labor protection as well as their ability to represent workers, notably in small firms where the law will allow employers and employees to negotiate deals on issues like overtime pay.

A decade ago, then-President Jacques Chirac's government center-right government scrapped legislation to reform the labor market after it had been approved by parliament. It was pulled after weeks of violent youth protests. (Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Lough and Alison Williams)

09/15/2016 5:58