We have a lot of goddamned nerve criticising the French, ya know.
French Unions in National Strike on PensionsBy STEVEN ERLANGER
Published: September 7, 2010
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PARIS — Just back from summer vacation, French unions carried out a one-day national strike on Tuesday, snarling transportation just as Parliament was to begin debating a measure that would raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has called the pension bill the last major legislation of his first term and vowed that the government would not bend on the essentials of the proposal, which is intended to avoid large and growing deficits in the pension system as people live longer and baby boomers start to reach retirement age.
But after an anxious summer of urban violence and a government effort to harden its security policy, aggressively deporting non-French Roma who overstay their allowed period in France, Mr. Sarkozy finds himself at a political crossroads — historically low in the opinion polls and with his own party divided and dispirited.
The unions said 2.5 million people went on strike, exceeding their goal of 2 million, while the Interior Ministry said the figure was considerably lower, 1.12 million, in 220 protests across France.
In Paris, unions said 250,000 people demonstrated, while the police said the figure was 80,000. There were significant disruptions in suburban and intercity train travel, and many short-haul flights were canceled, though the subway system in Paris operated at near-normal capacity on most lines. Many teachers also were on strike, meaning that many parents of small children were forced to stay at home.
The man in charge of drafting and pushing through the pension law, Labor Minister Éric Woerth, is barely hanging on to his job after revelations that he has been economical with the truth in discussing his relationship with the family and fortune of Liliane Bettencourt, the heiress of L’Oréal.
Mr. Woerth’s problems of conflict of interest — he pushed Mr. Sarkozy to give Mrs. Bettencourt’s wealth manager a Légion d’Honneur just before the manager hired Mr. Woerth’s wife — might not loom so large had he not also been until recently the treasurer of Mr. Sarkozy’s governing party, the Union for a Popular Movement. Suggestions of political payoffs, hardly unusual in France, are being gleefully promoted by a generally left-leaning print and Internet news media.
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Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/world/europe/08france.html?_r=1A National Strike... man, I wish we could have one of those!
:shrug:
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