La Grève (The Strike)

Today was an interesting day, if not the most productive for Gatard & Associés. A strike closed down parts of the metro which is apparently an entirely acceptable excuse to not show up for work all day. I arrived, my metro line being unaffected, at around 9:45 AM, and found a near empty office. Most of the day in the office was spent surfing the net for some french news articles, trying to brush up on my reading skills. Madame de Horsey later called me for a quick lunch break when we ended up going to visit the strike that was preventing me from being a productive member of the community. With our riot shields and tear-gas at ready, we plunged into the mob violence that.....oh wait, no nevermind, it turns out it was a lot more like a concert than a strike.


The sky was filled with baloons at La Republique, with strikers filling the streets as far as the eyes could see. Members of several groups were abounding and we even managed to get an interview...entirely in french and somewhat inaudible. Hope you parents brushed up on your french and super auditory skills recently.


The conversation went roughly along the lines of me asking essentially what the strike was about, with the man doing his best to slowly and simply explain it to me. Overall, the most I was able to get out of it was a better understanding of the factional nature of french labor unions, or in other words, that he really hated half the people there. It would seem that his labor union, The Fairtrade Labelling Organizations (FLO) was quite at arms with the main organization on scene, Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT). While the reasoning was lost in translation somewhere, it's safe to assume that France is facing a similar problem as the American Federation of Labor and Knights of Labor over a century ago when the debate over having a union of skilled or unskilled workers was the big political issue.

The main issue in France right now is a debate over whether or not to raise the legal retirement age from 60 to 62 years of age. This movement comes at a time in France's history where it has a drastically higher aged population than it does young people, causing it to expect a shortage in the work force in the next few years.

Another big event in France is of course the world cup. France, in a heart breaking loss to South Africa, was knocked out of the tournament just two days ago. The new thing? Italy! Many Parisiens are finding themselves routing for Italy in the upcoming matches. Italy today suffered quite the upset after Yukoslavia took the match 3-2. Within a 3 minute period, after Italy was down 2-0, they came back 2-2, giving up a last minute, game winning goal.

It was quite the scene today, but also a great deal of fun.

Mack Feldman