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.
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French taxi drivers will on Tuesday launch a new salvo in their battle against ride-hire app Uber and other minicab firms as they strike alongside air traffic controllers and civil servants. Police said the bus driver was arrested. Air traffic controllers are also staging a demonstration, leading to dozens of canceled flights.
Around one in five flights were cancelled due to action by air traffic controllers, according to broadcaster France 24, which also reported police had made 20 arrests as taxi drivers set up barricades of burning tires.
Ahead of tomorrow’s strike, the spokesman of the Taxis de France collective, Thierry Guichard, appealed for calm, saying on French radio: “We don’t want any violent protests (because) that would be counter-productive”.
Taxi drivers say the government is failing to protect them from competition from VTCs, and that their business has fallen by 20-to-30 percent in Paris.
Traditional taxi drivers are protesting at what they consider unfair competition from Uber, which has faced a string of legal challenges in France.
Air France warned that “last-minute delays or cancellations can not be ruled out” despite promising to operate all long-haul flights and more than 80 percent of European flights.
The drivers joined a nationwide strike by public sector workers.
Taxis plan to clog access to airports near Paris, Toulouse, Marseille and Bordeaux, as well as at Porte Maillot on the western edge of the capital, as part of a continued protest against the proliferation of auto services such as Uber.
The leftist FO union says that, with inflation, a July 2010 freeze on the index used to calculate salaries has cost civil servants eight percent of their purchasing power.
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Public servants are angry over a range of issues including pay, education reforms and working conditions. Teachers are scheduled to march in cities across the country on Tuesday afternoon. Travellers on Tuesday may also encounter roadblocks set up by a different set of protesters: farmers upset over falling prices.
