Paris police fired tear gas and taxi drivers lit bonfires on a major highway Tuesday amid nationwide strikes and protests over working conditions and competition from non-traditional services such as Uber. About 1,200 taxis also held “go slows” around airports and a peripheral ring road around Paris.
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FRANCE 24’s reporter, Jonathan Walsh, said: “The disruption today is probably going to be massive”.
France’s National Taxi Union (UNT) says only fully-licensed taxi drivers can pick up fares on the street.
The airports affected will be Charles De Gaulle, Orly, Beauvais-Tille, Lyon-Saint-Exupery, Nice Cote d’Azur, Marseille Provence, Bordeaux-Merignac, Toulouse Blagnac and Nantes Atlantique.
The protests have been described as “Black Tuesday”. He described “American cowboys” who “want to destroy our system, the system we are all attached to”.
AFP dubbed the widespread protests “Uber revolution” as the company’s executives faced trial in Paris, its offices got raided in Amsterdam, and rape allegations mounted in Delhi. Uber argues the sector needs to catch up with the times.
A year ago the city of Dayton amended its taxi and transportation ordinance to regulate ride share services. Last summer, the action, which was mostly peaceful but included some violent confrontations, led the government to start an investigation into the company which ultimately chose to suspend its UberPOP ride sharing service in France.
The strike also affected schools, with the education ministry saying more than 12 percent of primary teachers had joined over demands for higher pay, as well as 22 percent of high school teachers who are protesting against the reform of education for pupils aged between 11 and 15.
In the west of the country it was French farmers who showed their anger towards the government by blocking certain key roads.
In response to the protests, Uber sent a message to its French customers which said that the goal of the demonstrations was “to put pressure on the government to…limit competition”.
French striking taxi drivers block the traffic as they demonstrate at Porte Maillot in Paris, Jan. 26, 2016.
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At previous protests, drivers torched cars, attacked several Uber drivers and passengers and blocked access to airports, train stations and major roads. The driver had just dropped off two clients at their hotel when 20 taxis drivers blocked his auto, threw eggs and flour on it before starting to punch the driver and eventually throwing him against the hotel’s window.
