French riot police have used water cannon and teargas to break up a strike picket blocking access to a large oil refinery near Marseille in an attempt by trade unions to paralyse the country’s fuel supply network in protest at changes to employment laws.

The pre-dawn police raids to force down a picket line at the Exxon Mobil Fos-sur-Mer refinery marked an escalation in the standoff between the French president, François Hollande, and protesters led by the CGT union.

The union is seeking to force the government to withdraw its planned changes to the labour laws with rolling strikes and picket-line blockades at refineries and fuel depots, as well as open-ended rail strikes.

Six of France’s eight refineries have stopped operating or reduced output due to strikes and blockades. The CGT said strike action had been voted at all eight of France’s refineries, and denounced the police raid on the refinery near Marseille as an operation “of unprecedented violence”.

There were long traffic jams at fuel pumps across France as regular motorists, taxi and delivery drivers fearing a fuel shortage tried to stock up on petrol.

The transport minister, Alain Vidalies, said one in five of the country’s 12,500 petrol stations were either completely dry or out of one type of fuel, a week after oil workers began the strike. Motorists in the Paris region resorted to tracking down fuel tankers and following them to petrol stations. In the north-east, motorists were driving over the border to stock up in Belgium.

The government vowed to break the blockades and “liberate” other oil refinery sites. The prime minister, Manuel Valls, said: “We will continue to clear the sites, the depots, which are today blocked by this organisation.” Hollande said the strike participants represented a minority of activists.



The CGT’s leader, Philippe Martinez, said: “We’ll see this through to the finish, to withdrawal of the labour law. This is a government which has turned its back on its promises and we are now seeing the consequences.”

The CGT’s hard line against Hollande’s changes to labour laws comes after three months of protests that brought hundreds of thousands on to the streets. Earlier this month, the Socialist government – lacking the parliamentary backing to vote in the changes, which would make it easier for employers to hire and fire workers – used a decree to force the bill into law.

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After repeated street demonstrations failed to budge the government, the CGT union has toughened its strategy, organising rolling strikes at oil refineries and some ports. It has also called on its members to stage weekly strikes on state railways. An open-ended strike by members of certain unions on the Paris Métro and suburban commuter train network has been called for 2 June, a week before the Euro 2016 football tournament opens.

The grim mood has been compounded by violence on the margins of demonstrations and violent skirmishes between protesters and police in recent weeks. Several Socialist party offices in towns in France have had windows smashed or graffitied. In the early hours of Monday morning, the Socialist party office in Grenoble was left pockmarked by 12 bullets.

The CGT’s brinkmanship strategy also marks a battle for influence inside an organisation that was once France’s biggest trade union group but is now facing competition from other unions. The standoff is intended to send a message about the nature of a trade union’s role, with the CGT attempting to show itself as the opposition to the government at a time when Hollande is facing growing dissent from leftwing voters.

Medef, France’s employers’ organisation, called on the government to “re-establish the rule of law”.

Hollande, who hopes to run again for office next year despite being France’s least popular president on record, had feared “end-of-term” protests echoing that faced by Nicolas Sarkozy over pension changes in 2010.

Some polls show that if Hollande runs again in 2017, he could risk being knocked out of the final round by the far-fight Front National’s Marine Le Pen.