PARIS, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Employees of France's national statistics office will try to block more economic data releases as part of a protest against a plan to move some of their jobs out of Paris, a spokesman for the protestors said on Thursday.
The publication of French payrolls data for the third quarter, which was due on Thursday at 0745 GMT, was delayed until Dec. 16 because of a protest by staff, statistics office INSEE said on Wednesday.
The protestors also blocked INSEE's website (www.insee.fr) on Thursday.
Julie Herviant, a spokeswoman for the Committee for the Defense of Public Statistics said the web site would be blocked "all day at least".
She also said other indicators could be delayed.
"We will try. We cannot guarantee it and we can not issue a warning either or it might fail, but we have a plan for this, at least for a few days," she said.
Many INSEE staff are unhappy about a proposal to shift part of the statistics office from Paris to Metz in eastern France. They say the quality of the data will be threatened by the move.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said at the beginning of September around 1,000 INSEE jobs would move to Metz by 2011 to compensate for the closure of military barracks in the region.
The latest protests follow last week's presentation of a report on the plan by Jean-Philippe Cotis, the director of INSEE, and Jean-Pierre Duport, the vice president of the national council for statistics (CNIS) to the government.
It recommended that the jobs of more than 500 statisticians, mostly from INSEE but some from government ministries, should be transferred to Metz within a 2010-2013 timeframe. (Reporting by Veronique Tison; Writing by Anna Willard, editing by Mike Peacock)