Coup de Gueule
(My apologies to those hoping to read about camels, dissertation research, solar electrification, or moto-rides in the streets of Niamey... today, I am French, and I am pissed off.)
Ok - so I may have been in West Africa all year but that doesn't mean I've been out of the loop entirely. In fact, the house I currently stay in has a T.V. with all sorts of amazing channels, like CNN, which enable me to stay on top of current events. So I get to follow all the latest news about political instability in Pakistan, Burma, Georgia, Venezuela... and if I stay up late enough Thursday night, I can even catch the Democratic presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas! But this coup de gueule doesn't go out to Musharaff's totalitarian moves, the Burmese Junta's human rights violations, or Hillary's staged Q&A's.
This coup de gueule goes out to my country, this tiny little piece of proud land we call France. Today is Black Wednesday in France because all public transportation has stopped. Can you imagine Paris with no subways, no buses, and an all-British Eurostar staff? Well, I suppose it's not too hard to imagine since it's not the first time this happens. I watch shots of empty rails and defeated French workers waiting on platforms, and I feel shame.
What's the problem here? What are transportation workers' unions protesting? They are protesting Sarkozy's intended reforms of the "régimes speciaux de retraite", that special status 500,000 working and over 1 million retired (that's one hell of a gap) civil servants enjoy in France that enables them to call it quits after 37.5 years of paying their dues. The rest of the working force, meanwhile, labors on for 2.5 more years. These special arrangements, which the strikers like to call "social acquisitions", are vestiges of the past: they made sense decades ago when transportation work was physically dangerous and harmful, what with coal and steam and smoke and all. But they are absolutely moot today. Still, transportation workers see their "régimes speciaux" as a right they have acquired over time, and which no politician - let alone a right-wing president who likes to jog in the morning à la Bush - can take away. So as France's debt grows deeper and deeper, the transportation workers do what they do best: they strike.
What's particularly infuriating this time around (no, Sarko is not the first to try and change this institutionalized system of privilege), is that French public opinion does NOT support these strikers and that Sarko was elected with an absolute majority after months of campaigning on these reforms. Special interests are paralyzing my little country.
The French like to pride themselves on their ability to enjoy the good things in life. They distinguish themselves from the Americans they love to hate so much with their five weeks of paid vacation every year, their free healthcare, and - apparently - their right to strike indeterminately. But the reality is that the French government can no longer sponsor the French way of life, and we don't live in a world where a G-8 country can remain a G-8 country and live like a G-8 country when a chunk of its labor force gets to retire at age 50 or 55 and spend the remaining 30 years of its life (because yes, life expectancy in France is just over 80 years) living off its children and grand-children's money.
The "régimes speciaux" in France reflect a "mentalité spéciale" that's got to go. It pervades in large sections of French society, from civil servants to students (yes, students strike too. Apparently they don't want their public universities to implement some kind of admissions process that goes beyond just signing up). It is a misplaced sense of entitlement that guarantees only that the days of ze French way of life are numbered.
Ok - so I may have been in West Africa all year but that doesn't mean I've been out of the loop entirely. In fact, the house I currently stay in has a T.V. with all sorts of amazing channels, like CNN, which enable me to stay on top of current events. So I get to follow all the latest news about political instability in Pakistan, Burma, Georgia, Venezuela... and if I stay up late enough Thursday night, I can even catch the Democratic presidential candidate debate in Las Vegas! But this coup de gueule doesn't go out to Musharaff's totalitarian moves, the Burmese Junta's human rights violations, or Hillary's staged Q&A's.
This coup de gueule goes out to my country, this tiny little piece of proud land we call France. Today is Black Wednesday in France because all public transportation has stopped. Can you imagine Paris with no subways, no buses, and an all-British Eurostar staff? Well, I suppose it's not too hard to imagine since it's not the first time this happens. I watch shots of empty rails and defeated French workers waiting on platforms, and I feel shame.
What's the problem here? What are transportation workers' unions protesting? They are protesting Sarkozy's intended reforms of the "régimes speciaux de retraite", that special status 500,000 working and over 1 million retired (that's one hell of a gap) civil servants enjoy in France that enables them to call it quits after 37.5 years of paying their dues. The rest of the working force, meanwhile, labors on for 2.5 more years. These special arrangements, which the strikers like to call "social acquisitions", are vestiges of the past: they made sense decades ago when transportation work was physically dangerous and harmful, what with coal and steam and smoke and all. But they are absolutely moot today. Still, transportation workers see their "régimes speciaux" as a right they have acquired over time, and which no politician - let alone a right-wing president who likes to jog in the morning à la Bush - can take away. So as France's debt grows deeper and deeper, the transportation workers do what they do best: they strike.
What's particularly infuriating this time around (no, Sarko is not the first to try and change this institutionalized system of privilege), is that French public opinion does NOT support these strikers and that Sarko was elected with an absolute majority after months of campaigning on these reforms. Special interests are paralyzing my little country.
The French like to pride themselves on their ability to enjoy the good things in life. They distinguish themselves from the Americans they love to hate so much with their five weeks of paid vacation every year, their free healthcare, and - apparently - their right to strike indeterminately. But the reality is that the French government can no longer sponsor the French way of life, and we don't live in a world where a G-8 country can remain a G-8 country and live like a G-8 country when a chunk of its labor force gets to retire at age 50 or 55 and spend the remaining 30 years of its life (because yes, life expectancy in France is just over 80 years) living off its children and grand-children's money.
The "régimes speciaux" in France reflect a "mentalité spéciale" that's got to go. It pervades in large sections of French society, from civil servants to students (yes, students strike too. Apparently they don't want their public universities to implement some kind of admissions process that goes beyond just signing up). It is a misplaced sense of entitlement that guarantees only that the days of ze French way of life are numbered.
posted by cla at 4:11 AM
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