Masked youths clashed with police in Paris and striking workers blockaded refineries and disrupted nuclear power stations today as an escalating wave of industrial action against labour reforms rocked France.
Police fired tear gas at around 100 protesters who broke away from a march through the capital to smash windows of shops and parked cars, an AFP reporter said, in the latest outburst of anger at the controversial legislation.
With just two weeks to go before France hosts the Euro 2016 football championship, union activists blocked roads and bridges, and train drivers and air traffic controllers staged walkouts.
Unions called for rolling strikes on the Paris Metro to start on the day of the opening match on June 10.
Union leaders said 100,000 people marched through Paris, but police put the number at only around 19,000.
Reports said 31 demonstrators were arrested.
Although some blockades on fuel depots and refineries in the north of the country were called off, many motorists were still stuck in long queues at petrol stations around France.
A man in his 50s had to be airlifted to hospital after he was seriously injured when a motorist rammed a roadblock set up by activists outside a petrol refinery at Fos-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast.
At the Tricastin nuclear plant in southern France, workers set fire to piles of tyres, sending out clouds of black smoke.
Unions are furious about the legislation forced through parliament by the deeply unpopular Socialist government which is aiming to reform France's famously rigid labour laws by making it easier for companies to hire and fire workers.
Under intense pressure, Prime Minister Manuel Valls insisted that the law would not be withdrawn, but said it might still be possible to make "changes" or "improvements".
But there were signs that some in the ruling Socialist Party were buckling, with Finance Minister Michel Sapin suggesting the most contested part of the legislation should be rewritten.
Valls slapped Sapin down and ruled out revamping the clause, which gives individual companies more of a free hand in setting working conditions.
"You cannot blockade a country, you cannot attack the economic interests of France in this way," a defiant Valls told parliament, after earlier branding the CGT union that is driving the protests "irresponsible".
