French civil servants of many different stripes are currently on strike, protesting (relatively) new President Nicolas Sarkozy's efforts to drag the French economy out of the 1960s and into present-day Western Europe.
Sarkozy was elected on a platform of reducing the incredibly inefficient socialist labor bureaucracy and making French business competitive on the global playing field. The French workers, conditioned by decades of socialist labor union coddling, are not too terribly thrilled with the idea of having to actually work for a living, and are letting Sarkozy know it.
I expect Sarkozy to stand his ground. He was elected to get control of this thing, to reduce unemployment from the stratospheric current numbers, to increase efficiency, and to generally make French goods attractive on the world market, which they currently are not. He had to have expected a showdown with the local commies was coming sooner rather than later, and has to have a plan for it.
This is no more than round one in what promises to be a long battle, one Sarkozy has to win if France is ever going to be relevant again.
Sarkozy was elected on a platform of reducing the incredibly inefficient socialist labor bureaucracy and making French business competitive on the global playing field. The French workers, conditioned by decades of socialist labor union coddling, are not too terribly thrilled with the idea of having to actually work for a living, and are letting Sarkozy know it.
I expect Sarkozy to stand his ground. He was elected to get control of this thing, to reduce unemployment from the stratospheric current numbers, to increase efficiency, and to generally make French goods attractive on the world market, which they currently are not. He had to have expected a showdown with the local commies was coming sooner rather than later, and has to have a plan for it.
This is no more than round one in what promises to be a long battle, one Sarkozy has to win if France is ever going to be relevant again.
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