Sarkozy to hold talks as French strike looms

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy was to hold last-minute talks with management from France's top transport and energy firms on Tuesday, hours before workers in those sectors were to strike against his pension reform plans.

Transport workers object to President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to scrap special pension rights in their sectors and others, a key element of the economic reforms he has promised to deliver.

Their strike, which will overlap with a walkout by energy workers on Wednesday and possibly even protests by civil servants and students next week, is the first major test of Sarkozy's reform agenda.

Opinion polls suggest the public backs Sarkozy in the standoff, and he has repeatedly pledged to stand firm.

"I will pursue these reforms to the end," he told the European Parliament. "Nothing will blow me off course."

National rail workers begin their rolling walkout on Tuesday evening at 1900 GMT. They will be joined the next day by Paris public transport workers.

State rail operator SNCF said it expected only 90 out of 700 high-speed intercity services to run during the strike, while one-tenth the normal number of buses and metro trains were due to be running in Paris on Wednesday.

"Victory or the end of Sarkozyism. It is in those terms, with great risks for itself, that the ruling power describes the first large social conflict facing it," the left-wing, generally anti-Sarkozy, newspaper Liberation said in an analysis.

Sarkozy has, however, repeatedly said the door remained open to talks, and he was due to meet management from the SNCF, Paris transport operator RATP, gas firm Gaz de France and power utility Electicite de France at 1730 GMT.

"WHIFF OF 1995"

Transport workers say their working conditions may not be as difficult as when their pension privileges, or "special regimes", were devised more than half a century ago, but say they still face awkward working hours that justify their status.

The government says such schemes are outdated and costly, and it will have to pump 5 billion euros ($7.3 billion) into the special pension funds this year alone to balance their accounts.

"If this reform isn't done today, no one can guarantee them that in 10 or 15 years time their pensions can still be paid," Labour Minister Xavier Bertrand told France 2 television.

The special regimes were introduced after World War Two for workers in especially arduous jobs and allow some workers to retire after paying pension contributions for 37.5 years rather than the 40 years demanded of other workers.

Some observers say the walk-out could last until at least November 20 -- when civil servants and teachers launch a one-day strike against plans to cut 23,000 public sector jobs next year.

Students, who are blockading buildings at around a dozen campuses across the country over a reform that has given greater autonomy to universities, are due to protest on the same day.

The prospect of such massive protests has prompted some commentators to draw parallels with the biggest transport strike in recent memory -- a crippling walkout of 1995 that forced the government to scrap plans to reform the special regimes.

French daily Le Parisien quoted the head of the Communist Revolutionary League, Olivier Besancenot, as saying there was "a whiff of 1995" in the air, but SNCF management disagreed.

"The situation is completely different (to 1995), this reform was prepared on the political and technical level," SNCF chief Anne-Marie Idrac told RTL radio.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy, Jon Boyle, Swaha Pattanaik and Gwenaelle Barzic; Editing by Caroline Drees)