Updated December 08, 2019 09:00:45

Scuffles broke out in Paris between police and protesters as yellow vest activists joined the wave of protest actions against the Government's overhaul of France's national retirement system.

Truckers joined the demonstrations, blocking roads in 10 regions across France to protest against a planned reduction in tax breaks on diesel for road transport

A similar fuel tax is what unleashed the yellow vest movement a year ago, and this convergence of grievances could pose a major new threat to Macron's presidency.

In Paris there were scuffles with police as several hundred yellow vest protesters continued their weekly demonstrations, but numbers were relatively small compared with previous weeks as the transport strike made it hard to reach the capital.

Train and metro services remained heavily disrupted by the pension strike.

The combined pressure of the yellow vest movement over the cost of living and union protests against pension reform are a major challenge to President Emmanuel Macron's efforts to balance the state budget and introduce more environmentally friendly legislation in the second half of his mandate.

Truckers federation OTRE (Organisation des Transporteurs Routiers Europeens) said it opposed an increase in taxes on diesel for commercial vehicles as part of the government's draft 2020 budget.

"Our movement is a movement of rage against the continued fiscal punishment of road transport that we can no longer tolerate," Alexis Gibergues, OTRE's president in the Ile-de-France region around Paris.

Mr Gibergues said truckers were not targeting city centres for now, but that could change if the Government did not respond.

French TV showed images of trucks blocking motorways in several parts of the country, including the Ile-de-France. Passenger cars were allowed to pass slowly, but many foreign trucks were forced to stop.

As the pension strikes entered a third day on Saturday, tourists and shoppers faced shuttered subway lines around Paris and near-empty train stations.

Photo: As the pension strikes entered a third day Saturday, tourists and shoppers faced shuttered subway lines. (AP: Thibault Camus)

The travel chaos is not deterring the Government so far, though.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe plainly told the French in a nationwide address Friday: "You're going to have to work longer."

He will present details of the plan next week. The Government says it won't raise the official retirement age of 62, but the plan is expected to include financial conditions to encourage people to work longer.

Mr Philippe did offer one olive branch, saying the changes would be progressive so that they don't become "brutal".

Mr Macron says the reform, which will streamline a convoluted system of 42 special pension plans, will make the system more fair and financially sustainable.

'Yellow vests are back out in the streets'

Photo: A few thousand yellow vest protesters marched in Paris on Saturday. (AP: Francois Mori)

Unions, however, see the plan as a threat to hard-fought workers' rights, and are digging in for what they hope is a protracted strike.

They are also planning new nationwide retirement protests for Tuesday, despite the tear gas and rioting that marred the edges of the Paris march Thursday.

Emmanuel Buquet, an unemployed 51-year-old from Rouen, said the mass protests gave a new impetus to the waning movement.

"Yellow vests are back out in the streets," he said.

"It's getting worse and worse. We've obtained nothing since last year, just crumbs. The reforms are getting stronger and stronger."

In a society accustomed to strikes for workers' rights, many people have supported the action, though that sentiment is likely to fade if the transport shutdown continues through next week.

"I knew it was going to last ... but I did not expect it to be that chaotic," Ley Basaki, who lives in the Paris suburb of Villemomble and struggles to get to and from work in the capital, said.

"There is absolutely nothing here, nothing, nothing. There is no bus, nothing."

Photo: Unions are digging in for what they hope is a protracted strike against government plans to redesign the national retirement system. (AP: Bob Edme)

Many travellers are using technology and social networks to find ways around the strike — working from home, using ride-sharing apps and riding shared bikes or electric scooters.

But some are using technology to support the strike: A group of activist gamers is raising money via a marathon session on game-streaming site Twitch.

Their manifesto says: "In the face of powers-that-be who are hardening their line and economic insecurity that is intensifying in all layers of the population", they are trying to "occupy other spaces for mobilization and invent other ways of joining the movement".

ABC/wires

Topics: demonstration, world-politics, business-economics-and-finance, tax, france

First posted December 08, 2019 08:17:04