"We're not happy to be a second-rate country or an ugly television soap opera," Susanna Camusso, the leader of the Italian General Confederation of Labor, Italy's largest labor union, said to rousing applause here in Piazza del Popolo, which was packed to the breaking point.
Savas Robolis, a member of the main labor union, the Greek General Confederation of Labor, who serves on a government committee on pension reform, called the pension situation a "time bomb".
Since 2009, the Greek economy has lost all of the 320,000 jobs it created between 2000 and 2008, according to Savas Robolis, a labor market expert at the Greek General Confederation of Labor, the country's main trade union.
At the same time, leaders of three of the more hard-line labor unions, including the Workers Forcee and the General Confederation of Labor, called for further strikes after the first call brought more than one million supporters into the streets on Tuesday.
Mr. Fillon succeeded after a second round of discussions with labor leaders on Thursday in convincing the moderate French Democratic Confederation of Labor, the largest union, to accept the proposals.
Vietnam General Confederation of Labor.
That code invested most power in one big national labor confederation and undercut any renegotiating of labor rules and salaries when business conditions changed.
The one-day strike was called by the largest labor confederation, which opposes an overhaul of labor legislation that will make it easier and cheaper for employers to lay off employees.
The protests were part of a broader strike called by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella labor group, to press demands for wage increases and better employment conditions.
Some of the UK's leading business organizations, including the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), are lobbying for some degree of labor mobility to ease business hiring post-Brexit.
The NTUC is a national confederation of unions in support of the labor movement.
