The Strike: Marx rolls over in his grave

It might come as a surprise to some that those behind the current strike actually believe that it is targeted at the government. After all, the strikers are not blockading the Palais Elysée, the Assemblée National or the Sénat as much as they are blockading the common citizen’s ability to get out and earn a living. As usual, the reason for not directly confronting government and instead confronting the people, who unlike the government have no means of defending themselves, is that, this being a functioning democracy, the people are the bosses and are supposed to be able to call the shots. As admirably high-minded as that is, it seems entirely unrealistic. Since the current occupant of the Elysée has only been at that address for six months, the people would have to wait another four and a half years to exercise those democratic rights, by which time Sarko will have replaced the entire Paris Metro with Meteor trains, which he will aptly rename as lines “14-1”, “14-2” and so on and which will operate without a single driver, being remotely piloted by virtual drivers in one of my old haunts, the outsourcing kingdom known as Bangalore, India.

In the meantime, we are the ones who get to suffer, especially those of us who are required to show up for work each day. I work with a fairly broad spectrum of commuters, both in the sense of how far they commute and their means for dealing with the strike. We have people living as close as literally just across the street and people living as far away as a daily morning and evening commute of an hour and a half each way. In terms of their ability to deal with the strike, we have, at one extreme, our support staff who have zero flexibility and now have to suffer through endless hours of commuting and, at the other extreme, some of my bosses literally have some of the highest salaries anywhere in Ile de France and, as a result, can avoid the worst inconveniences of the strike; they live closer, have cars and/or chauffeur service and are therefore hardly affected by the strike. This is one particularly ironic effect of the strike: in an effort to stand up for the common man, the political left that is behind these strikes is forcing thousands of members of the modern-day proletariat—secretaries, receptionists and cleaning workers—to spend millions of hours waiting on train platforms while the bourgeoisie hops into its chauffeured Peugeot 607s and has a slightly-longer-than-usual commute while reading Le Figaro or La Tribune. Marx is rolling over in his grave (if he were properly buried, Lenin would, too).

Because of my background in economics, I spent more time that I perhaps would have liked during grad school studying strikes—their history, legal underpinnings and, ultimately, political and economic benefits. But despite that academic exposure to the subject, I have to admit that before moving to France I misunderstood French strikes in at least two important ways:

First, I always thought that a strike was the last tool that organized labor used in a dispute.

I always thought that a strike was the last tool that organized labor used in a dispute. Quotation

Since it is such a powerful, damaging weapon, you hold it back and do everything that you can to avoid using it. In this way, it is a bit like a nuclear weapon. You do not ever want to use it because, once you have, you have basically used all of your cards. It is such an extreme tool that it is stronger if used as a threat than as an actual weapon because its actual use creates such devastating consequences for so many people and kills any sense of goodwill that may have existed between the parties. So, as I thought before coming to France, one puts it on the table, but does everything to avoid using it. Here in France, on the other hand, it’s the first card thrown down, signifying, “okay, I’ve played my hand, now let’s start talking.”

Second, a transit strike does not mean, as I thought before coming to France, that there simply are no trains. As difficult as that may make things, at least it would be simple—you simply cannot get out and go to work, unless you are within walking distance. But a French strike is so much worse than that. They don’t simply close the Metro, but instead announce that, for example, one-eighth of the trains are running. That tells you nothing about how long it will take you to get to work, but tells you that you have to get out there and make a good faith attempt to do so. So you wait on a train platform with all eight out of eight commuters, trying to squeeze onto one-eighth as many trains. So a strike day is no bonbon-eating aperitif-sipping morning at home; it’s a slug-fest on the Metro, which might last the entire morning.

Ever wonder how exactly this works each morning for your average Paris office worker? Some people actually can take the day off, but as the strike goes on, there are fewer and fewer of them. Most Parisian office workers have plenty of vacation days stored up—either actual vacation days or what we call RTT days, which are a sort of extra days to offset our not actually working the 35-hour workweek (hardly anyone does). So people get up, see the 1-in-8-trains message about their particular train line and say, okay, what the heck, I’ll take a vacation day. But that means that that worker will, of course, have one less vacation day later, so they’re not likely to do this too many days in a row. Also, some RTT days that are not exercised by the end of the year are actually paid, so taking an RTT day because of a strike can effectively mean the loss of one day’s wages. So on the first day of a strike, a decent chunk of Parisian office workers avoid the mess by taking a vacation or RTT day. But fewer and fewer take those days as the strike wears on, so by a week into it, virtually everyone is fighting their way onto whatever trains are left in service.

And thousands of people crammed into inconceivably small spaces all think the same thought, in unison, all morning long: how long will this last?