Commuters faced major headaches getting to work in London and across France on Tuesday as strikes shut down large parts of the transit systems.

In England a strike by London Underground employees meant the Tube subway system was largely closed, eliminating a vital transit link used by millions.

Thousands of maintenance workers, drivers and station staff walked out in the first of several planned 24-hour strikes.

Their main complaint is that 800 planned job cuts will hurt employee and passenger safety, and will be a detriment to overall service on the Underground.

CTV's London Bureau Chief Tom Kennedy said the transit authority wants to reduce the number of people working in ticket offices because many of those jobs have become redundant as passengers increasingly use automated ticketing services.

"The transit authority wants to cut the number of people working in those ticket offices, 800 jobs would be lost, and the unions are really fighting hard against this," Kennedy told CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday.

French tensions

In France, unions launched strikes nationwide in opposition to President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. Train, plane, bus and subway service was interrupted as a result, stranding millions of tourists, commuters and travellers.

Post offices and schools were also hit by the French strike that affected virtually all offices where civil servants work.

Some commuters complained that the unions were inconveniencing commuters in order to make their point.

"I'm just getting tired of this because this is not the first time," said Henda Fersi, at the Part-Dieu train station in Lyon, in southeast France.

"I understand the strikers' point of view but, still, they put us in a difficult situation and we are penalized."

In Paris, commuters crammed into a reduced number of subway cars, or drove their own vehicles into the congested city centre.

French unions were hoping two million demonstrators would take to the streets Tuesday in protest against the plan to raise the retirement age, which is already among the lowest in Europe.

In nearby Germany, by contrast, retirement age is currently 65, but is being increased to 67.

Sarkozy's government argues that the struggling economy cannot maintain the current retirement age, when people are living so much longer than in the past.

"They really are opposing each other. They're at loggerheads over this very fundamental issue," Kennedy said.

The labour dispute comes at a time when Sarkozy's approval rating is dismal, hovering in the mid-30 per cent range.

French Labour Minister Eric Woerth said the reforms will move forward regardless of the Tuesday protests.

Because virtually all members of the French civil service supported the strike in some measure, the impact was widespread.

Airlines were asked to cancel a quarter of their flights, high-speed train departures were cut to two out of every five, post offices, schools, even some newspapers and radio stations were hit by the strikes.

The strikes, which were expected to wrap up by the finish of the end-of-day rush hour on Tuesday, came as EU finance ministers met in Brussels. During the meetings they agreed to create new financial institutions to protect Europe from another government debt crisis, the likes of which nearly bankrupt Greece.

However the leaders failed to agree on bringing in new taxes for the banking sector or for financial trading.