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Posted on 03/22/2018 11:12:43 AM PDT by GoldenState_Rose
PARIS — Railway workers and air traffic controllers led strikes across France on Thursday, opening a bitter showdown over labor overhauls sought by French President Emmanuel Macron.
The strikes — which disrupted travel across the country — signal a critical test for Macron as his government seeks to challenge France’s tightly controlled public-sector labor markets in attempts to stimulate a stagnant economy.
Macron faced only minimal resistance to the first wave of workplace changes last fall, and unemployment figures have already begun to drop.
But France’s powerful public sector, which employs more than 5 million people, is putting its foot down against the next stage: proposals to cut 120,000 public-sector jobs, hire more contract workers, and slash budgets across the board.
Rail workers planned to go for the jugular with a new type of “rolling” protest: a two-day strike every three days, a major upheaval to a transport system that handles millions of passengers every day.
So far, Macron has been spared the kind of devastating strikes that have unraveled previous French governments.
The public-sector plans — may prove to be a different story.
These new changes — particularly with regard to the railways — strike at the heart of a system that has long been a model of the French state’s collective commitments...
Railway workers have long enjoyed expansive benefits, including generous pensions and, for some employees, the option of retirement at age 52...
These benefits stem from an era when the job entailed intense manual labor — a time Macron has said is long gone.
There is also symbolism at work. Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of a 1968 student uprising that grew into the largest public protest in modern French history.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Running out of money to pay the layabouts who have grown used to getting paid well for doing little. Merit-based pay? Horrors!
This should be good.
For people who abhor “gun violence”, the writers and editors at the WaPo certainly use a lot of firearms-related idioms & metaphors in their headlines and stories...
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