France's National Pastime

For generations, the French have taken to the streets to protest things. Their idea of a strike is not because the Teamsters need a better contract (although work-related strikes are not uncommon here, either); this kind of a strike is for all citizens to disrupt life as we know it to let the Government know that something they want to do is very, very bad.  In 1968, a strike by a group of 100 or so University students grabbed headlines and within a few days 11 million people were on strike.  For two weeks.  Brought down the government, it did (de Gaulle had to go into hiding!).  There were strikes before that and plenty since (my students, who have read Zazie dans le métro, will recall that a métro strike figures into the plot):  some are wildcat or reactionary, others are planned and announced well in advance. 

Yesterday, France went on a General Strike.  And when I say France, I mean somewhere between 1 and 2 million people (can you ever get a good number?) did not work yesterday to let the Government know they they want to be able to retire at age 60.  The French Government, in the face of a fiscal crisis at least as bad as the one we're dealing with the States, has proposed a roll-back of retirement benefits to age 62.
The French are not pleased about this.  They take to the streets for lots of reasons, but this one is viewed as especially justified, as the right to retire is critical to the French sense of well-being.  The very idea of losing two years of retirement would make my blood pressure go up -- And if two years are taken away now, who's to say that 2 more won't be up for grabs in the next 10 years?

Who was on strike yesterday?  Well, depending on the union, 18-40% of workers got the day off, with the expectation that they would participate in demonstrations.  Teachers, day care staff, train conductors, airline personnel, mail carriers -- you name it, some subset of the population was likely en grève yesterday.  To be fair, international travel tends to be excepted from this practice, so foreigners are less likely to be terribly affected (that's not to say that it couldn't happen, though!)

My day started off well.  The metro ride to the library, about 9:30 AM yesterday, did not seem particularly affected.  I had a coffee at the bar of a nearby café (many of you know that if you stand at the bar, you will pay less for your crème than if you were to sit at a table), and passed through BN "security" just about 10 AM.  I walked up the 2 flights of stairs to the reading room, only to find that it was closed.  The reading room staff had gone on strike!  Not the security guard, not the coat-check person, the library workers.  Dang.

At least I hadn't planned to spend the whole day at the BN!  But wait, would the Cinémathèque, where I've only been once before, be shut down as well?  I needed to buy more minutes for my cell phone (I have a pay-as-you-go jobbie), so I wandered into another café to do that, then realized that I didn't have the Cinémathèque number with me.  So I decided to head home and regroup at a place where I know the internet connection is reliable.  I had to wait about 7 minutes for a train back,  which is quite a while for a weekday.  I noticed later on a video screen that, as part of the strike, 1 out of 3 trains were not running.

Once home, I located the number for the Cinémathèque was assured by a nameless person who  answered the phone that the Research Area (Espace Chercheurs) would be open.  I got some lunch and headed down there.  Fortunately, the nameless person was mostly correct; I got in right on time (the EC opens at 1 PM on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays), but there were signs posted that there would be an "exceptional" early closing "due to disruptions relating to the strike" -- This made me wonder if they wanted to make sure that staff would get home in a timely way, or what.  In any event, I was planning on leaving the library around 5 as it was, so that was fine.

The trains were very crowded on the way home.  Business not quite as usual, but not as bad as it could have been. Today, everything was back to normal, with (to me) surprisingly little mention of the Strike at all.  Unlikely that anything else will be scheduled until September.  Who wants to go on strike when you're already enjoying your 5 weeks of paid vacation?