1 Million Across France March to Oppose Premier’s Key Labor Law

More than 1 million protesters marched through the streets of France on Tuesday in opposition to a labor law proposed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who has staked his political future on the outcome of the clash.

Strikes by transport workers, teachers and other public employees closed schools, slowed transit and disrupted services, but fell short of bringing the country to a stop. Despite an intense security deployment, there were scattered outbreaks of violence around the nation.

The protests culminated a five-week campaign by students who have shut down universities and high schools in an attempt to block a law that loosens job security safeguards in what De Villepin says is an effort to make it easier to hire young people.

“I’m here to show solidarity with the young people,” said Nadia Kamech, 50, a biochemistry professor who marched despite intermittent showers in Paris. “I’m waiting for the government to retreat from its positions. If that’s not the case, the movement will harden. It’s not just the young people in the street, but everybody.”

The estimate of more than 1 million protesters nationwide was made by police; organizers said nearly three times that number of people participated.

During the afternoon, riot officers and volunteer union guards skirmished with dozens of youths in Paris who vandalized vehicles, smashed the windows of a supermarket and a cafe and roughed up protesters, stealing their cellphones, cameras and purses.

Police arrested at least 488 people in Paris and about 300 others elsewhere in connection with the protests. Authorities blamed some of the violence on gangs from outlying slums that have disrupted several recent protests, raising fears of a resurgence of the riots of last November by mostly Muslim residents of the housing projects.

As night fell and the march ended in the Place de la Republique, police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters and others who refused to disband. Assailants threw bottles, stones and other objects at police, injuring one officer, who was hit in the face by a bottle rocket, authorities said. Eight other officers and 46 demonstrators were injured around the country.

Earlier, De Villepin had presided over unruly debate in the National Assembly. Legislators of the center-left opposition accused him of stoking social conflict. In response, the prime minister criticized labor representatives for refusing to negotiate two controversial details of the law: a two-year probation period for workers younger than 26 and the right of employers to dismiss those young employees without cause during that period.

“I am ready to engage in dialogue and modify the contract on two points,” De Villepin declared over shouts and jeers of legislators. “They have refused my outstretched hand. I renew this offer here in front of all of you.”

Union leaders rejected De Villepin’s invitation to meet today and demanded that he accept talks about scuttling the law, which still has to be approved by a constitutional council and President Jacques Chirac.

De Villepin has refused to withdraw the measure, but has said he is willing to discuss reducing the probationary period and requiring employers to explain the grounds for dismissal.

The high-stakes dispute could decide the future of De Villepin’s increasingly divided government and affect his chances of running for president next year.

An eloquent and mercurial technocrat, De Villepin, 52, has never run for office. He was appointed by Chirac, his mentor, last year.

De Villepin proposed the disputed labor law in response to last year’s riots, which were blamed partly on France’s youth unemployment rate, the highest in Western Europe. He used a special procedure to push it through the assembly without debate.

De Villepin has gambled that voters will agree that a system of extensive job security benefits has helped create a cadre of the hard-core unemployed, and must be curtailed. But he risks a popular backlash that has toppled previous leaders who tried to reform social welfare programs. In a nation that last year suffered its worst urban unrest in decades, the combination of street protests and lingering tension in the slums has caused deep concern. It also has aggravated De Villepin’s intraparty feud with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, a longtime rival and fellow presidential contender.

Sarkozy, who leads the ruling center-right coalition, appeared to distance himself from De Villepin on Tuesday. He told coalition members that the government should hold off on implementing the law in order to advance negotiations, according to press reports.

De Villepin and Sarkozy are likely to be more concerned about their center-right voting base than with the demonstrators, mostly leftists unlikely to vote for either man. But polls show that more than half of voters disapprove of the labor law. And the Chirac government has been weakened by internal strife and a string of setbacks, including the riots and the defeat of the proposed European Union constitution in a national referendum last year.

Some protesters demanded that the government step down.

“Villepin resign!” chanted Eloi, a student wearing a scooter helmet. He pounded a drum in the Place de l’Italie in southeastern Paris, where rock music blared from speakers and the smell of hamburgers and sausages wafted from stands set up for the event.

“I hope this demonstration brings about the withdrawal of the law,” said Eloi, 19, who said he was a music student at the University of Vincennes-Saint Denis and declined to give his last name. “I hope it gets people talking to each other about globalization so they realize that’s the real problem.”

Labor leaders have warned of more strikes, including a possible general strike. Student leaders have threatened protests such as blocking roads and rail lines in the coming days.