French unions put pressure on Hollande to avoid job cuts

French unions pressed President Francois Hollande to prove his job-saving mettle by handing his Socialist cabinet a list of looming company shutdowns that are threatening tens of thousands of jobs at the start of labor talks.

Hollande, who came to power this month against a grim economic backdrop, has promised to reverse rising unemployment and shore up the struggling manufacturing sector, partly by pumping investment into small and medium businesses.

As Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault held his first talks with union leaders to discuss the job situation ahead of a July summit on social issues, Hollande's immediate challenge was to respond to the warnings about layoffs in the pipeline.

Hardline union CGT named 46 companies it said were planning to shut production sites in a list published in French media that showed about 90,000 jobs threatened directly or indirectly.

Firms planning to close factories ranged from carmakers PSA Peugeot Citron and General Motors to retailer Conforama, according to the list.

"We want to deal with these layoff plans immediately," Francois Chereque, head of the CFDT union, France's largest by membership, told Europe 1 radio. "We are urgently requesting the state to focus on jobs. Jobs are the Number 1 problem."

The task of staving off an avalanche of job cuts falls to Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, present at Tuesday's talks, who has been given a mission to stop healthy firms from laying off workers.

But critics are skeptical he will be able to do so, as courts have already struck down one attempt to freeze a layoff plan.