The French R on Strike AGAIN!!

Some claim that for the French, going on strike is a national sport.
This time it’s really massive, with millions of strikers disrupting air and rail services, while schools and post offices are closed.

The reason: protesters are angry at government plans to overhaul pensions and raise the retirement age from 60 to 62. BTW, France has one of Europe’s lowest retirement ages and they will go down fighting to keep it that way. It’s all about the joie de vivre.

This brings back memories from the days I lived in France as a student. Fully immersed in the University system, (in Normandie) my American compatriots and I marvelled when even the students went on strike, disrupting the start of classes in the fall. What could they possibly have to complain about? It was difficult for us to empathize with their grievances especially since their tuition cost was virtually nil—(their fees for textbooks exceeded what we paid for tuition for the entire year at our U.S. university).

At the same time, we admired their passion and drive to fight for what they believed in. We were busy looking for the best buys on le pain et le vin. (bread and wine).

The topic aroused my curiosity about strikers in other nations. Of course, in the U.S., strikes are far less common. In fact, Airline industry employees are the only national groups that make striking headlines regularly.

Here are examples of recent strikes around the globe:
Civil servants in Greece, doctors in Germany, taxi-drivers in China, coffee shop owners in the Netherlands, teachers and nurses in Niger, general practitioners in Bulgaria, truckers in Spain, and postal workers in the UK.

At the end of one long list of global strikes, it says 2010: the Cast of Jersey Shore. Well, at least we are passionate about something, right!