Strike causes record Paris jams

Traffic backed up for a record 250 km across the Paris region yesterday as employees of the RATP transport authority observed a one-day strike to demand higher pay and more staff.

French radio and television called it "black Thursday", but Parisians took the inconvenience literally in their stride, using bicycles, scooters and roller skates to go to work. At least it wasn't raining.

Among those caught in the morning traffic were the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, Mr David Trimble and Mr Seamus Mallon, who were en route to London for meetings with Mr Tony Blair.

At a presentation to potential French investors the previous day, the Northern Ireland Trade Minister, Sir Reg Empey, boasted that strikes were rare in Northern Ireland, which, he said, "enjoys among the best labour relations in Europe".

Platforms in Metro stations were packed, and passengers waited up to an hour to squeeze into overcrowded trains. An announcement saying that "following a social movement traffic is disrupted", came over loudspeakers. There were no trains at all on the central La Defense-Chateau de Vincennes line. On other routes, train traffic was reduced by two thirds on average. Trains ran normally only on the fully automated, driverless "Meteor" line 14.

Although 60 per cent of Paris buses were running, commuters who boarded them got stuck in traffic. In Lyons, employees of the state-run railway company, SNCF, also went on strike, cancelling one in three fast trains between Paris and Lyons and four-fifths of regional trains.

The Paris strike was called by the communist CGT and a smaller independent union which together account for 60 per cent of the RATP's workers. About 3,000 transport workers demonstrated in front of the RATP's steel and glass headquarters on the Seine near the Gare de Lyon. The authority's chairman, Mr Jean-Paul Bailly, said the reasons given for the strike "appear totally disproportionate compared to the effect on commuters."

The government of the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, has ignored the recent spate of strikes, which included several hundred thousand private sector workers marching to defend retirement at age 60 a week ago, and a widely observed strike for higher pay by civil servants on Tuesday. That strike shut down schools, and parents were forced to hire babysitters or stay home.

Yesterday's strike served as a pretext for many people to take the day off. Consumer advocacy is rare in France, but a group called the Association of Users of the Administration and Public Services called the strike "scandalous" and denounced "the contempt which the unions are showing towards commuters". Yet again, the association noted, "a small minority does not hesitate to take a region of several million inhabitants hostage for selfish motives".