Solidarity in truckers' no man's land

Three busloads of riot police and a half-dozen more on motorcycles are parked at the roundabout outside the Platforme Logistique de Rungis, a 20-hectare labyrinth of warehouses and loading docks south of Paris. Beyond them is a no man's land where red and white banners hang on the chain-link fence. "Together, the strength of numbers", says one. "Action. Unity. Solidarity," say others. "Oh, they're just old banners we had in a box," Patrich Kuhnel, a short, wiry, French lorry-driver explains. "We get them out every time there's a strike." The rituals of industrial action are well rehearsed here, their repercussions as predictable as the autumn cold that seized France this past week.

The 15 men gathered at the gate to the Rungis warehouses wear jeans, anoraks and leather jackets festooned with CGT stickers. CGT is the Communist General Confederation of Labour, one of four unions representing striking truckers. The men shift their feet and rub their hands, trying to keep warm. A thermos filled with coffee perches on the control box of the lowered barrier. They sip espresso from white plastic cups and hand one another packets of Marlboro Lights and Gauloises.

Mr Kuhnel gazes nostalgically at the roundabout. "Last year we parked our trucks there," he says, pointing at the police buses. "It worked really well - we had lorries backed up in every direction." When 25 employees of Via Location (a leading French company, with 700 lorries) arrived at 7 a.m. on Monday to set up their barricade, the police had beaten them to the spot. So they parked their 3.5-tonne Renault refrigerator trucks inside the complex.

"We'll see if there's a confrontation," another driver, Francois Pougetoux says, nodding towards the riot police. "At Brie-ComteRobert yesterday, they threatened to press charges. So the drivers abandoned the blockade and set up another. If they chase us out, that's what we'll do."

The entry to the distribution centre looks as if a child had spilled toys in haphazard order. "Twenty-five trucks makes a hell of a blockade," Jean-Michel Vanderhaegen, a portly truck dispatcher, says. The loading docks are empty, their aluminium doors, glistening with rain, are clamped shut. "We're blocking 183 companies and a customs office here," Mr Vanderhaegen continues.

"We've got 50 tonnes of Danone yoghurt. Last year we offered to let charities come in and take the yoghurt. The company preferred to destroy it rather than give it away. The insurance would have paid anyway - that's the patronat [employers or management] for you."

North African-born Mohamed Nemmar (59) has been a lorrydriver for the past 31 years. He says he's too old to sleep in his truck cabin, but he stands at the barricade with his friends all day, out of solidarity. His colleagues say Mr Nemmar is proof the patronat cannot be trusted: "Last year they promised that drivers over 55 could retire in February. They kept postponing it - now it's supposed to happen next month. The patrons kept our money to play the stock market. We have friends who retired in July, and they've been three months without payment."

Wearing a tweed golf cap and a blue jumpsuit, the shy Mr Nemmar nods in approval. What is it like to be a French lorrydriver, I ask the doyen of truckers? "It means sleeping in your truck, never having enough money . . ." he says. So why did he do it? "I wanted to be independent, not have a boss on my back all the time." Mr Nemmar is divorced and lives alone in council housing.

"Because of our job," one of the young men chimes in, "ours is a profession of cuckolds."

For the sake of his family life, Mr Pougetoux gave up driving long distances when his son Jean was born. His earnings plummeted from 14,000 francs (£1,647) to 7,000 per month, for 169 hours.

"With two salaries, my wife and I can eat and pay the rent, that's all," he says. "We don't have a life. If we want to buy something, we put it on credit." Mr Pougetoux says he feels sorry for lorry drivers in Britain: "If they do what we're doing, they go to prison."

He and his colleagues want EU-wide trucking standards, to prevent Italians using long lorries, and the Spaniards carrying heavier loads. They also want a return to the old TRO (tarification routiere obligatoire), the minimum fee schedule that France abandoned in 1988.

By creating fuel and food shortages, the truckers know they are undermining public sympathy. "We have no choice," Mr Pougetoux says. "If we don't block the refineries, the fruit and vegetable markets, nobody listens." He doesn't trust the leftwing government any more than its centre-right predecessor. "We want action, not words," he says. "We had promises last year."

Like some married couples, France seems incapable of resolving disputes without crisis. Jerome Iliou (20) is the youngest of the truckers blockading the Rungis warehouses. He trained for two years to be a driver, and says he'll stay with the trade for life.

For him, strikes are simply part of the job: "Five weeks' paid vacation, meal tickets, the salaries we receive - we wouldn't have any of this if it hadn't been for those who went on strike before us. This is the way it's done here, and always will be."