I wonder if this is France's equivalent of the stand-down between President Reagan and the air traffic controllers' union:
As France Approves Labor Law, Students Block Roads and RailsBy KATRIN BENNHOLD
International Herald Tribune
Published: March 30, 2006PARIS, March 30 —France's Constitutional Council ruled this evening that a disputed labor law that has brought more than a million protesters into the streets was valid, setting the stage for further confrontation.
President Jacques Chirac is expected to make the law effective by signing it as early as Friday and will address the nation in the evening. He is also expected to propose round-table negotiations similar to those that helped end the student-worker uprising of May 1968, French news reports said.
The leader of the opposition Socialist Party, François Hollande, immediately warned that Mr. Chirac was opening the door to "a trial of strength."
Even as the nine-member council issued its ruling, students and unions opposed to the law kept up pressure on the government, blockading roads and railway tracks and resisting as the authorities moved to reopen high schools that have been shut down by protesting students.
On the face of it, the ruling represented a victory for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the architect of the law, which makes it easy to lay off employees up to the age of 26 within the first two years of their employment.
