Home > Eiffel Tower unplugged by worker protest
PARIS: French power workers who cut off the electricity at the Eiffel Tower for a few minutes overnight have pursued a commando-style battle against privatisation by restoring supplies to homes with unpaid bills.
Electricite de France, the state-owned utility slated for partial privatisation, said it was planning legal action after workers led by the CGT trade union briefly cut power supplies to shops and homes around the famous Champs Elysee avenue.
CGT union officials said that the protest had cut EDF’s overall power output by 6,000 megawatts, or roughly six per cent.
An EDF spokeswoman said the output drop was less, at around 3,300 megawatts. "That’s the figure we have," she said.
Union officials said workers were worried for their jobs and the utility’s future in a country with a strong public service tradition. They said they were expanding an operation to reconnect homes cut off by EDF for failing to pay bills.
A spokeswoman at the Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, said business was unaffected by the brief power cut.
Similar cuts hit President Jacques Chirac’s Elysee Palace on Wednesday before back-up generators kicked in, as at the Eiffel Tower.
The battle is another headache for President Jacques Chirac after his governing UMP party was savaged in European elections on Sunday, a second drubbing in three months for a conservative government unpopular over unemployment, reform and cost-cutting.
’ROBIN HOOD’ CAMPAIGN
The CGT handed in a petition with some 500,000 signatures calling on the government to drop its plans for EDF. "We say stop, stop this dossier, and place it under the authority of the president," said Maurice Marion, a CGT spokesman.
The union has vowed to implement a "Robin Hood-style campaign, reconnecting 250,000 households that have been cut off for non-payment of bills.
On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin condemned the targeted power cuts by EDF employees.
"We will not retreat. . .I want this seen through to the end," he said of legislation that went to parliament this week to change the status of the company and pave the way for the sale of perhaps 30 per cent of its capital to private investors."
He said he wanted EDF management to punish those behind several days of targeted power cuts, which also hit his own country house in the west of France earlier this week.
The EDF spokeswoman said legal complaints had been filed and the matter was in the hands of judicial investigators. "It’s now for the judges to deal with," she said.
All the trade unions at EDF oppose the plan to sell off a chunk of the company but the CGT, the dominant one, has not secured support from the others for the wildcat protests it is leading.
CGT representatives headed to the Elysee Palace today to present a petition which they said contained half a million signatures demanding withdrawal of the partial sell-off plan and the holding of a referendum on the issue.