More Than A Million Protest In France

(CBS/AP)  More than one million people poured into the streets across France and strikers disrupted air, rail and bus travel Tuesday — even shutting down the Eiffel Tower — in the largest nationwide protest in at least a quarter of a century over a youth labor law.

Police fired water cannons and tear gas to disperse some demonstrators, who threw stones, bottles and traffic cones, and, reports CBS News correspondent Elaine Cobbe, even a bicycle at police.

Police made 787 arrests around the country — 488 of them in Paris, National Police Chief Michel Gaudin told The Associated Press. Injuries in the capital were tallied at 46 demonstrators and nine police officers.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy later invited some 200 police officers, some still wearing their protective gear, to the Interior Ministry for wine and snacks.

"I'm proud of you," he said. "Mission accomplished."

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Watch RAW video of police-demonstrator clashes in Paris.
Hear a report from CBS News' Elaine Cobbe.

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Unions and the leftist opposition joined in solidarity with the angry students for the one-day strike, increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin to withdraw the measure that makes it easier to fire young workers.

But these students and young workers on the streets are not revolutionaries demanding change, but reactionaries insisting on the status quo, CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports. And in France, for many, in spite of high unemployment numbers, that still means a job for life.

Pascal Achard, an economics student, is one of the organizers.

"Unemployment is very high, so it's very had to get a stable job in different corporations, so of course they are afraid," Achard told MacVicar.

Although Villepin held firm, cracks opened in his conservative government. Presidential hopeful Sarkozy, in a clear break with Villepin, suggested suspending the law to allow for negotiations.

With the government in crisis, President Jacques Chirac canceled a trip planned for later in the week to stay in Paris.

Police and organizers' estimates for the number of marchers varied greatly, but both showed that the protest movement is growing.

Police said 1,055,000 people took part in more than 250 protests nationwide, including 92,000 in Paris. The organizers' total was closer to 3 million, with 700,000 at the march from the Left Bank to the heavily policed Place de Republique.

Elsewhere, 31,000 marched in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, 28,000 in the southern port of Marseille, 26,000 in the Alpine city of Grenoble, 17,000 in Lyon; 28,000 in the western city of Rennes, and hundreds of thousands in dozens of other cities and towns, according to police.

Riot police, under orders to arrest as many troublemakers as possible, moved aggressively in Paris to prevent a repeat of the intense violence of past demonstrations.

But as MacVicar reports, the battles on the streets are becoming a test of wills. The government is convinced it can outlast the students — that the distractions of exams and vacations will cause the protests to fizzle out.

Students think they've got the government on the ropes.

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