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SV/CGT EXTERIOR Banners.
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CU Cartoons of employers' heads amid anti-bosses slogans.
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CU CGT patch on demonstrator's shirt PULL BACK TO SV.
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SV Protestors with placards hanging from their necks.
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5.
GV NIGHT: Demonstrators marching and chanting (6 SHOTS)
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Initials JS/JW





Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Some 2,000 members of the strongly-Communist influenced trade union, Confederation Generale de Travail (CGT), held a protest march in Paris on November 25. They marched to and demonstration outside, the offices of the employers' organisation, Centre national du Patronat Francais (CNPF). The CGT was responding to the employers' refusal to pay all the taxes the Socialist government of Francois Mitterrand has imposed for unemployment benefits. Trade unionists were also angered that the CNPF wanted social Affairs minister Pierre Beregovoy to slash 17 thousand million francs (about 2.41 thousand million dollars) from the unemployment benefits fund, called UNEDIC. The protest came on the day the government's official gazette published sweeping cuts in the benefits, following a row between employers and trade unions and the breakdown of UNEDIC. The cuts reduced the fund by about 12 thousand million francs (1.7 thousand million dollars), only two-thirds of the cuts the employers were seeking. Basic unemployment benefit rates will fall, as will the length of time for which benefits are paid. On top of this, the reductions will lower payments for people ho retire early, and for those who have been in work only a short time. The government hopes these reductions, and the higher contributions of employers and workers it imposed in October, will massively reduce the fund's expected 1983 deficit of 30 thousand million francs (4.2 thousand million dollars). The government had to act when CNPF withdrew from the UNEDIC fund last week.