Thursday’s clashes are the latest in a number of demonstrations against proposed employment law reforms.
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Police estimated that around 78,000 people took part in the demonstrations nationwide.
The turnout nationwide was however far lower than at the start of the rallies six months ago, when they brought hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets.
The violence unleashed by the reforms peaked on June 14, just four days after the start of the Euro 2016 football championships in France, when around 40 people were hurt and dozens arrested.
As turnout fades after six months of protests, the head of the Force Ouvriere union signaled that the focus of opposition would now shift to legal challenges against the application of the new law, and that street marches were at an end.
While the demonstrations generally passed off peacefully, in the western city of Nantes sporadic violence broke out between some protesters and riot police. Workers, he said, should continue “fighting tooth and nail to stop [the law]”.
A focal point of the protest was in the eastern city of Belfort. The plant now assembles high-speed TGV train locomotives.
Hundreds of workers and demonstrators marched through the streets, chanting “Alstom is Belfort, Belfort is Alstom”.
Train-maker Alstom had announced it would close the plant to a lack of orders.
TRAVELLERS heading for airports today are advised to contact their airlines before they leave, as French air traffic controllers have walked out in support of the ongoing protest against labour reforms.
Scores of flights in and out of the country were also cancelled as air traffic controllers went on strike to protest the law that makes it easier to fire workers during downturns and for bosses to negotiate directly with employees on working time.
Seven months from a presidential election, Mailly said that the unions would not let Socialist President Francois Hollande and his government off the hook. The French civil aviation authority DGAC had forewarned Tuesday that 15 per cent flights at the Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports in Paris, besides the one at Beauvais, 80 km from the capital, would have to be cancelled. He has said he anticipates a 10 percent drop in unemployment on the back of these laws. Public sector unions in France have issued a strike call in a bid to renew protests against a controversial labour law that was forced through parliament in July, without a vote.
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Conservative critics, meanwhile, say the changes are too modest to invigorate the French economy, which has lagged behind those of Germany and other European nations over the past few years.
