Strikes Intensify in France

PARIS—French labor unions vowed to keep demonstrating in the streets, thwarting gasoline supplies, flights and public transport, as rolling strikes against President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension overhaul enter their second week.

The protests—which are the biggest resistance to economic-austerity measures across the European Union but which Mr. Sarkozy has vowed won't derail the government plans—could tarnish the leader's presidency, fewer than two years before the next elections.

French people so far have shown sympathy for worker protests, according to several opinion polls. But as the strikes continue and become more crippling, with sporadic violence, the tide may turn in favor of Mr. Sarkozy. Political analysts said the French president's intransigence could eventually become an asset. Many of Mr. Sarkozy's predecessors have backed down in the face of public protests.

"The more radical the protests get, the better for Mr. Sarkozy," said François Miquet-Marty of French polling group Viavoice. "French people don't like it when strikes disrupt their everyday life."

The confrontation with unions is proving a major test for Mr. Sarkozy, who has said he won't give in to street protests, and repeated on Tuesday that he aimed to press ahead with the pension overhaul.

"The biggest problem would be if I failed to do my duty, to make sure that we can pay for today's and tomorrow's pensions," Mr. Sarkozy told journalists during a briefing in the northern French city of Deauville.

Mr. Sarkozy says French people can't afford to retire earlier than most of their EU neighbors, which have cut pension benefits or raised future retirement ages in accordance with rising life expectancies. To bridge a growing shortfall in France's state-run pension funds, he has proposed increasing the standard, minimum retirement age to 62 years, from a current level of 60.

On Tuesday, unions organized a sixth day of nationwide marches in two months, saying they want the standard age to remain at 60. They caused disruptions, notably in the public-transport and education systems.

Between a third and half of flights to and from Paris' main airports were canceled. In Lyon and in the Paris suburbs, several cars were burned when youth clashed with riot police. Classes were disrupted or canceled at between 5% and 10% of France's high schools, according to the Education Ministry and student unions.

The main cause of crippling disruption is refinery workers, who have been on strike for more than a week. French motorists are struggling to fill their tanks as about a third of France's 12,500 gas stations have run dry, the government said.

French Prime Minister François Fillon said Tuesday that the government would step in to unblock fuel depots and promised gasoline supply would return to normal within four or five days.

French government officials said they expected protests would wane when the pension bill is approved by Parliament, possibly later this month, and when many people go on vacation next week.

But some union leaders said they were determined to protest further.

"We won't go back quietly to our rooms," Charles Foulard, a delegate with the CGT union at the Grandpuits refinery near Paris, said in a telephone interview. "Perhaps that is what Mr. Sarkozy is hoping for but it won't happen."

Social-welfare bills have crippled governments in the past. In 1995, newly elected President Jacques Chirac indicated he might call into question the special pension benefits of some workers, such as train drivers, who could retire at 50 or 55. In response, transport workers brought France to a three-week halt, and Mr. Chirac didn't try to enact other major changes to benefits in his next 12 years in office.

Other European Union countries have in recent years increased their retirement ages and cut pension payments to respond to slow growth and longer life spans. In 2007, Germany opted to gradually increase its standard retirement age to 67 from 65. Last year, Italy pegged future retirement ages to rising life expectancy.

France reduced the minimum retirement age to 60 from 65 in 1983 under Socialist President François Mitterrand. Unions saw this as a major social victory, ranking alongside five weeks of annual vacation, a minimum wage and the 35-hour workweek.

More recently, France has reduced some pension benefits. But in its effort to avoid cutting monthly payments to pensioners, it has also piled up debt. If no changes are made to the system, the annual deficit of state-run pension funds could exceed €45 billion ($62.7 billion) by 2020, according to a council advising the government.