Violence Erupts At French Protests

Students clashed with police in Paris, capping off a day of protests that drew about 500,000 people.

The controversy is over a new law allowing employers to fire young workers with out giving reason during their first two years on the job.

Earlier in the month at least two other marches were held, but Saturday's protest marks the largest and most destructive yet, reports CBS's Dave Browde. In Paris, police fired tear gas to contain the nearly four-mile-long stretch of angry demonstrators.

The previously student driven marches were joined Saturday with union members and employees — who think the new jobs plan will undermine labor protections that protect them as well.

The government says the law will help France better compete and encourage employers to higher young workers.

Youth joblessness stands at 23 percent nationwide, Browde reports. And that number more than doubles for those who are both young and poor. The sky-high unemployment numbers are — in part — what was blamed for the riots that ravaged depressed suburbs last fall.

"Aren't we the future of France?" asked Aurelie Silan, a 20-year-old student who joined the carpet of protesters crawling through Paris.

The controversy over the jobs law has threatened to weaken the government as elections approach next year.

Government spokesman Jean-Francois Cope, speaking on the France-3 TV network, insisted on the need for a "spirit of dialogue." But he limited dialogue to "improving" the contract — not withdrawing it as protesters demand.

Saturday's marches were nearly twice the size of protests Thursday and larger than one on March 7, which drew 400,000.

"Throw away the job contract, don't throw away the youth!" chanted a group of students shaking tambourines. Many wore plastic bags to illustrate their feeling that the new law reduces young people to disposable workers.

A group of protest organizers urged President Jacques Chirac on Saturday not to let the new law take effect as expected in April.

The group said it expects an answer by Monday — and then decide whether to continue protests that have paralyzed at least 16 universities and dominated political discourse for weeks.

Chirac has pushed Villepin to act "as quickly as possible" to defuse the crisis.

Tensions escalated Saturday night as a protesting fringe of youths moved to the Sorbonne, blockaded since police stormed the Paris landmark a week ago to dislodge occupying students. The university has become a symbol of the protest.

Youths hurled bottles, boards and other projectiles at security forces barricaded behind a tall metal structure blocking off the domed university which sits in the back of a square in the heart of the Left Bank student neighborhood.

In an apparent bid to set afire a police van serving as a blockade, protesters, apparently accidentally, torched the entrance of the Gap, on the corner of the square. They had earlier attacked a McDonald's restaurant, set a car afire, smashed a shop window, trashed a bus stop and hurled stones, golf balls and other objects at police. Police responded with tear gas to end several hours of skirmishes.

Saturday's protests — the biggest show yet of the country's escalating anger over the law — were largely peaceful, though they tangled transport and hobbled commerce in the capital and several other cities.

They also left French people wondering whether Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, in the toughest test of his nearly 10-month tenure, would hold out. The usually outspoken premier was conspicuously silent during Saturday's protests.

At the McDonald's restaurant, near Place de la Nation, about a dozen protesters broke windows and punched in a takeout window wall before fleeing ahead of police, leaving customers and employees shaken.

The protests reached every corner of France, with organizers citing 160 marches from the small provincial town of Rochefort in the southwest to the major city of Lyon in the southeast.

The Paris protests were the biggest, attracting some 80,000 people, according to police. Organizers put the number at 300,000.

Police also fired tear gas at protesters in the southeastern coastal city of Marseille and in central Clermont-Ferrand.

On Friday night, a group of university presidents met with Villepin and called on him to withdraw the jobs plan for six months to allow for debate.

Failure to resolve the crisis could sorely compromise Villepin —believed to be Chirac's preferred successor — before next year's presidential elections.