French prison guards strike in dispute over conditions and pay

French trade unions called for a nationwide strike among prison guards and a "total blockade" of prisons on Monday in a dispute with the government about guards' safety and low pay.

The standoff between the unions and French President Emmanuel Macron's government started with a series of attacks in recent weeks against prison guards by inmates, many of them Islamic extremists, in the country's notoriously violent and overcrowded penitentiary system.

The BBC reported Nicole Belloubet, the country's justice minister, had called on the unions to "resume dialogue immediately" and was hoping emergency talks would end the crisis.

France24 said the government was hopeful the talks could resume quickly.

"The minister of justice wishes to resume dialogue immediately," the ministry said in a statement.

Monday's industrial action was supported by the CGT union, the Force Ouvriere union and the Ufap-Unsa Justice union. They said guards were being asked to work in dangerous conditions and that enough was enough.

France24 reported two guards, one male and one female, were hospitalized on Sunday in the latest attack, in which a prisoner at a jail in Northern France attacked them with a table leg.

"This is, once again, an attack on the staff, we cannot stand it anymore. It's a daily thing," the BBC quoted Yannick Lefebvre, a spokesman for the Ufap-Unsa union, as saying.

Union representatives have complained that inmates attack prison guards around 4,000 times a year.

Agence France-Presse reported talks broke down last week, despite the government offering to create 1,100 prison guard jobs during the next four years to bolster the 28,000 guards who oversee 78,000 prisoners at 188 institutions around the country.

The government has also offered to separate the most violent prisoners from the main prison population in a bid to make the institutions safer.

Reuters reported striking prison guards had set fire to tires and wooden pallets at barricades outside the gates of several prisons on Monday morning.

"We will not be used as cannon fodder. We won't give an inch," Yoan Karar, a senior Force Ouvriere union official, told CNews.

His union wants the government to offer guards higher wages and an additional 2,400 workers.