French strikers back to work

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PARIS, Oct 29 (AFP): Many of the last strikers holding out against President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform returned to work Friday, heralding a possible end to their battle but leaving France with a profound social malaise.
Workers at oil refineries, where industrial action in recent weeks had threatened to paralyse the country, voted to return to work the day after nationwide demonstrations brought only half previous numbers onto the street.
Thursday's rallies, the ninth one-day protest in two months, nevertheless saw hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the law raising minimum retirement age from 60 to 62 after parliament on Wednesday passed the measure.
After all of France's 12 refineries were hit by industrial action, oil giant Total said that its six facilities were expected to resume work Friday, as protests lost momentum and the physical cost of rolling strikes took its toll.
A CFDT union official at Total's Grandpuits refinery in the northwest, where workers have been on strike since October 12, confirmed that they were "heading towards a resumption of work."
The CFDT's Mohamed Touis said that he couldn't see "how we could make the resistance last" but the strikers "feel like they've done something."
Meanwhile, fuel supplies are returning to normal, the government said, with around 85 per cent of filling stations supplied and striking rubbish collectors in the southern city of Toulouse also went back to work.
But some workers refused to be bowed, with 300 strikers in the south of France blockading a logistics centre outside Aix-en-Provence for several hours early Friday, an AFP photographer