1.
SV PAN Demonstrators with banners
0.08

2.
MV People looking from window
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3.
MV AND CU Demonstrators marching (2 shots)
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4.
MV Onlookers
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5.
CU Banners (2 shots)
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6.
CU PAN Waiting demonstrators
0.37

7.
MV AND SV Demonstrators with placards (3 shots)
0.43



Initials CL/1707



Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Tens of thousands of French left-wing trade union members marched peacefully through Central Paris on Thursday (12 June) in support of striking newspaper workers.

The demonstrators were also protesting against what they termed government authoritarianism towards the union movement.

The shouted slogans in support of the striking workers at the Paris daily newspaper, Le Parisien Libere. Most of the unionists belong to the powerful Communist-led trade union, the Confederation Generale de Travail (CGT) to which the printers' union is affiliated.

But with the march came the threat of the fourth printers' strike within eight weeks.

The strikes concern Parisien workers' refusal to accept a plan to lay off hundreds of staff at Le Parisien Libere as part of an economy drive launched by French Press baron Emilien Amaury. Six hundred workers barricaded themselves inside the printing plant of the newspaper on Thursday (12 June), 24 hours after a court order to expel them.

The court order was the latest move in a conflict which has paralysed the paper, France's biggest selling daily, for over a month.

So far, police have made no moves to expel them. The printers' union secretary, M. Roger Lancry, said the men inside the building would use passive resistance against the police. He added that as soon as the first policemen appeared,the strike order would go out across France.