PARIS, April 19 (Xinhua) -- Rail workers staged a fourth wave of rolling strikes against reform, students angry at the new education system walked out of universities, and civil servants took to the streets to express their discontent on Thursday as social unrest deepens in France.
With no end in sight to the stand-off between the government and trade unions, many protests are simmering and likely to coalesce into a single movement, posing tough challenges for President Emmanuel Macron.
For the eight movement in a month, 66 percent of train drivers at the state-run rail operator SNCF stopped working and halted train services on Thursday, reducing service to only one in three high-speed trains (TGV) and one in four inter-city trains.
Locking horns with a determined government, the country's unions have planned 36 days of strikes for the April-June period to force the government to reconsider its reform to liberalize the rail sector and end the preferential term of the sector's workers.
Unhappy about changes in entry-selection criteria, students blocked many universities in several cities, while garbage collectors and public workers have also joined the nationwide demonstration.
About 130 rallies were expected across the country on Thursday. In France's second-largest city of Marseille, CGT union counted 65,000 protesters while police put the figure at 5,000.
Heading the demonstration in Marseille, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of hard-left party Unbowed France said people took to the streets "to defend their claims related to their jobs, to their corporation and to defend public service."
"We are in a process where the radical behavior of the president has obviously pushed everyone to come together," he added.
Denouncing Macron's attitude to turn deaf ears to the action in the streets, CGT general secretary Philippe Martinez hailed the broader social movement against the president's reforms.
In Paris, police fired tear gas on hooded youth who hurled projectiles and vandalized property in a demonstration that drew 11,500 participants, according to police figures.
Having won a May election with 66.1 percent of the votes on a reformist project to modernize France, Macron vowed to serve the country well and bring change after he had shaken the country's political landscape.
A year on, 42 percent of voters approved his action and less than a quarter thought he was not close to the French concerns, a recent ifop poll showed.
Meanwhile, more than half of respondents believe that he has kept his campaign promises, a score higher than that obtained by his predecessors, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, or Francois Hollande at the same time of their mandate.
Admitting social movements are legitimate, Macron, who is 40, said he would stick to his plans, stressing that he is not one to govern based on opinion polls.
"There are worries, they are legitimate and I hear them. But the fact that people are sometimes not happy does not stop me," Macron told TF1 television on April 12.
"I want (France) to be a country of progress for everyone. I'm asking you to trust me...When I say I'll do things, I do," he added.
