Millions march in France over labor laws

PARIS -- Demonstrators opposed to a new jobs law swarmed parts of downtown Paris Tuesday, throwing stones, tearing down street signs and ripping up park benches. Riot police, firing tear gas canisters and making several charges, carried away protesters in handcuffs.\nPolice said at least 1 million people poured into the streets around the country in the latest protests against the law, which makes it easier to fire young workers. Organizers said 3 million people marched.\nA nationwide strike shut down the Eiffel Tower and snarled air and rail travel for the second time in a week while students barricaded themselves in schools.\nIt was the second time in a week that unions and student groups had succeeded in mobilizing such numbers. The largest march, in Paris, drew at least 80,000 people, while 935,000 marched in other parts of the country, police said.\nOrganizers put the figure in the capital at 700,000.\nViolence erupted at the end of the largest protest, in Paris, with youths pelting police with stones, fighting and using metal bars to break up chunks of pavement that were then hurled at helmeted riot officers.\nOne young woman twirled flaming batons. The sounds of blowing whistles were heard throughout the plaza.\nOfficers carrying batons and shields charged several times, making arrests.\nThe protest marks just one in a series over the past two months railing against the job law. But President Jacques Chirac signed it anyway Sunday, saying it will help France keep pace with the global economy.\nHe offered modifications, but students and unions rejected them, saying they want the law withdrawn, not softened.\n"What Chirac has done is not enough," said Rebecca Konforti, 18, who was among a group of students who jammed tables against the door of their high school in southern Paris to block entry. "They're not really concessions. He just did it to calm the students."\nBy midday, police said at least 100,000 people had hit French streets, including buoyant students parading through Marseille under a sunny southern sky and major marches from Nantes in the west to Saint-Etienne in the southeast. Protests even reached the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, where 2,000 people marched.\nSome 60 students lobbed eggs and other objects at police in the northern city of Lille, and at least one person was detained.\nOrganizers, who said the turnout was in the hundreds of thousands, hoped it would exceed the 1 million who marched last week. The afternoon march in Paris promised to be the biggest, and the city deployed 4,000 police to avert violence that marred previous protests.\nPolice actively looked to thwart troublemakers. At Paris' Saint-Lazare station, riot officers with weapons and a police dog pulled over train travelers disembarking from the suburbs, searching their bags and checking identities.\nTourists stood bewildered before closed gates at the Eiffel Tower. Parisian commuters flattened themselves onto limited subway trains. Garbage bins in some Paris neighborhoods stood overflowing and uncollected by striking sanitation workers.\nIrish budget airline Ryanair canceled all its flights in and out of France.\nThe strike appeared weaker, however, than last week's action. Signs of a possible breakthrough began to emerge as labor leaders suggested they could hold talks with lawmakers after Tuesday's demonstrations.\nPrime Minister Dominique de Villepin devised the disputed "first job contract" as a bid to boost the economy and stem chronic youth unemployment. He maintains it would encourage hiring by allowing employers to fire workers under 26 during their first two years on a job without giving a reason.\nThe measure is meant to cut a 22 percent unemployment rate among youths that reaches 50 percent in some poor, heavily immigrant neighborhoods. Villepin has cited the national statistics agency as saying it would create up to 80,000 new jobs at zero cost to the state.\nCritics say it threatens France's hallmark labor protections, and the crisis has severely damaged Villepin's political reputation.\nChirac stepped in Friday to order two major modifications -- reducing a trial period of two years to one year and forcing employers to explain any firings -- in hopes of defusing the crisis. In so doing, he dealt a blow to Villepin, his one-time top aide and apparent choice as successor next year.\nIn an apparent first in France, Chirac signed the original measure into law this weekend, as promised, but also effectively suspended it with an order that it not be applied. The 73-year-old president's legal sleight of hand kept the law alive while a new version is in the works.