Sarkozy seizes moral high ground in union dispute

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has picked his fight carefully.

Just six months into his five-year presidency, the rightist leader has squared off against transport and energy unions, who launched a nationwide strike on Wednesday over government plans to reform their cherished pension privileges.

The stakes are high. Any surrender would wreck Sarkozy's reformist credentials forever, whereas victory could seal his reputation as the man who brought France's unions to heel.

"This is a very important moment for Sarkozy because if he gives in, then that is the end of his promise of rupture," said Christophe Barbier, editor of L'Express Magazine.

"If he holds firm, the ideology of rupture will be confirmed and the method of confrontation validated."

The outcome is not yet certain, but the president's chances of success look good, with union leaders already hinting at compromises in a sign they have been outmaneuvered.

Sarkozy repeatedly told voters in the run up to the dispute that the reform of the so-called special pension regimes, which allow some 500,000 state sector workers to retire 2-1/2 years before most of their peers, was an act of social justice.

For the first time in living memory, pollsters say all-important public opinion is against the strikers, with one survey on Wednesday saying 58 percent of people thought the centre-right government should not back down.

MORAL HIGH GROUND

The sense of anti-union anger was clear in Paris as workers struggled to reach their offices in the autumn chill.

"I'm pretty hacked off about the strike. Why? Because my husband is a truck driver, who drives 14 hours a day, who has no bonuses ... who will retire at 60. And he says nothing," said Christine Meyer, a traveler at Gare de l'Est station.

The dispute has enabled Sarkozy to expose painful divisions within the ranks of the Socialist party, which recognizes the need for reform but feels unable to abandon the strikers.

"The unions are doing Sarkozy a fantastic favor," said Jacques Marseille, an economic historian at Paris university.

"This strike has offered the right an historic chance to seize the moral high ground and say they are on the side of justice and progression, while the left supports privileges and conservatism."

All previous attempts to reform the special pension regimes have ended in failure and some media have compared the showdown in France to the fight between Britain's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the powerful miners' union in 1984-85.

To some degree their overall aims are the same -- end the decline of their respective nations, reward merit and hard work, and force the unions to accept modern economic realities.

NO IDEOLOGUE

However, the economic environment, personalities and method are very different.

"Sarkozy has no inclination to start the sort of battle that Thatcher launched," said David Thesmar, an associate professor at the HEC business school near Paris.

"France is not in the disastrous position that Britain was in, the unions themselves are trying to avoid a politicized fight ... and Sarkozy is a real pragmatist," he added.

Unlike Thatcher, who cast herself as the iron lady, Sarkozy has refashioned himself as a man of compromise since becoming president in May and adheres to no single economic ideology.

Faced by a growing strike in France's Atlantic fishing fleet earlier this month, Sarkozy swiftly handed out a package of measures worth millions of euros in a successful attempt to smother the dispute in the build-up to Wednesday's strike.

Political commentators have no doubt that Sarkozy will be willing to make significant secondary concessions to transport and energy unions so long as they accept his core demand to align their pension rights with those of all other workers.

"Sarkozy is a realist and a pragmatist. He will give them something if they give him something in return. It is the logic of the auction house," said professor Marseille.

"He is not at all an ideologist like Thatcher was."

(Additional reporting by Jon Boyle; editing by Ralph Boulton)