France largely stopped work today. The country’s trade unions called a nationwide strike and hundreds of demonstrations over wages and the cost of living. The high school and university students who have been protesting their schools since September marched alongside them. And the government put some 70,000 police officers and gendarmes on the streets, determined that today would not become a repeat of October 17, when rioting and looting caught the police unprepared and, by the interior minister’s own later admission, overwhelmed them.

Here is what is known as of mid-afternoon in Paris, from wire reporting.

The turnout. The Interior Ministry counted about 270,000 participants in some 180 demonstrations by midday. Before the day began, the domestic intelligence services had expected between 500,000 and 700,000 people outside Paris, with tens of thousands more in the capital. Sophie Binet, who leads the CGT union federation, proclaimed the day a success. The largest single crowd was still to come: Paris’s main march was scheduled to set off at 2 p.m. from the Place de la République.

The disruption. Public transport was largely shut down in Lyon and Marseille, and rail services were disrupted across the country. The Eiffel Tower was closed by the strike. The Education Ministry said 17.5 percent of primary school teachers had walked out, and that 81 high schools were blocked — notably fewer, the government pointed out, than at the height of the movement last month. Action by power-sector unions trimmed the country’s nuclear output early in the day.

The incidents. In Lyon, riot police fired tear gas and charged a group the Interior Ministry described as several hundred hardcore protesters; the ministry said the violence was contained, with tensions still high. Near Toulouse, a fire was set at a high school in Tournefeuille, forcing pupils and staff to evacuate; the Interior Ministry said fireworks thrown at the school caused it. In Paris, demonstrators blocked the Rue de Rivoli, past the Louvre, with barricades of rubbish bins in the morning. A 16-year-old student was reported injured in La Courneuve, north of Paris, during a school strike.

The argument underneath. The unions’ joint statement says it plainly: living costs are rising while wages and pensions are not keeping pace, and the unions are demanding higher pay, including a higher minimum wage. The movement did not start with them. It began in September with high school students protesting deteriorating conditions in their schools — the Associated Press traces it to anger over staff shortages at a school southeast of Paris — and grew, week by week, into the broader challenge that produced October 17, the worst rioting France has seen in years. The Times reports that about 3,000 shops were looted that day.

The government. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, who admitted the October 17 policing operation was a “failure,” announced the 70,000-strong deployment on Wednesday and promised an “extremely firm response” to violence. The Paris police banned the unions’ preferred march route, from the Bastille to the Place de la Concorde; a court upheld the ban, and the Paris march was rerouted from République to Nation. President Emmanuel Macron convened a defense and security meeting on Wednesday ahead of the protests. The Education Minister, Édouard Geffray, has announced the government will cancel 836 planned job cuts in secondary education and create 500 additional high school teaching jobs.

The stakes. All of this lands on a government trying to pass an austerity budget through a divided parliament, with public debt approaching 120 percent of economic output, five months before a presidential election in which Marine Le Pen is polling strongly. Macron himself is barred from running again.

The day is not over. What happens in Paris this evening, and whether the movement’s regular Saturday round grows or shrinks this weekend, will say whether today was a peak or a step. This post will be updated as the reporting firms up.

Read more

• Reuters — France protests: what is behind the unrest and what comes next (explainer, updated today)
• Reuters — France braces for fresh protests as Macron seeks to prevent repeat of October unrest (today’s wire report)
• The Times — France braces for strikes and mass demonstrations on ‘Black Thursday’ (midday count and incidents)