France's conservative government faces one of its toughest tests yet this week as workers take to the streets to protest plans to privatise a host of state-owned firms including Electricite de France (EDF) and Air France.
The centre-right government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who took office in May, plans to sell assets in over a dozen firms, using the funds to shore up government finances and ward off a looming pensions crisis.
But with stock markets in a tailspin and labour unrest looming, its privatisation plans are looking increasingly hard to sell.
Tens of thousands of workers from the state-owned energy giant, the national airline, gas utility Gaz de France (GDF), the postal service and France Telecom, are expected to participate in marches eerily reminiscent of those that helped to topple the previous conservative government five years ago.
"There is a fear of globalisation and a perception among the French that their job security is increasingly precarious," said Francois Miquet-Marty, head of political studies at pollster Louis Harris.
"These fears are not directly linked to privatisations but there is obviously a connection."
EDF and GDF workers are scheduled to demonstrate tomorrow to defend their status as civil servants and to protect the generous pensions that this status affords them.
Union representatives, who fear a partial privatisation would put these benefits at risk, said they expected in excess of 50,000 marchers to descend on Paris.
"We are opposed to any change in the ownership structure and are defending public services as well as the status and retirement plans of EDF and GDF workers," said Jean-Francois Lejeune of the Force Ouvriere union.
"If you ask staff at the two companies, 70 per cent are against any privatisation moves."
The government's task is complicated by the fact that a majority of French appear to be satisfied with their public services.
In a survey published on Monday by French daily Le Parisien, 65 per cent of respondents said they believed their public services functioned well, with EDF rated the highest.
Ministers and politicians close to the government struck a conciliatory tone on Monday, but still vowed to push ahead with their plans in the face of union opposition.
"This demonstration reflects a certain fear which we understand, a fear about a future which is a bit uncertain," said Jacques Barrot, parliamentary leader of President Jacques Chirac's conservatives and a close ally of Raffarin.
"But at the same time this will not change our plans which appear fully justified when you see how a company like France Telecom was restricted by its public status."
France Telecom, struggling under a whopping e70 billion in debt, is relying on a government rescue to help it meet its financial obligations.
The previous leftist government is being blamed by conservatives for forcing the firm to make acquisitions with cash during the telecoms boom years of the late 1990s.
The company's stock has crumbled 84 per cent this year alone, hitting thousands of small shareholders who bought into its initial public offering in 1997 and souring France's appetite for more privatisations.
Tomorrow's protests are also expected to draw staff from Air France, which is first on the government's privatisation hit list.
Raffarin confirmed in a television interview last week that the government would push ahead with a privatisation of the airline, currently 54 per cent state-owned, in the autumn if market conditions permitted it.
An Air France spokesman said it was too early to comment on whether the walkout would have an impact on flights.
Government officials will meet with union representatives from EDF and GDF tomorrow before the marches begin.
They will be hoping to ward off a replay of the crippling strikes that greeted Prime Minister Alain Juppe's pension and fiscal reforms in late 1995.
Those strikes turned the electorate against the government and ultimately led to its surprise defeat in early elections called by Chirac in 1997.
Gael Sliman, associate director at pollsters BVA, said that surveys showed the French population had grown increasingly favourable to privatisations of key companies like Air France and EDF in recent years.
But he cautioned that public opinion on the issue was extremely volatile and that major strikes could swing views drastically in the other direction.
"In 1995 there was a huge amount of solidarity between the French and the strikers," he said. "If there is major conflict with the unions again the electorate can turn on Raffarin very quickly."