On strike again

And here we go again: nation-wide public transport strikes are disrupting the holy trinity of Parisian life, métro-boulot-dodo (subway-work-sleep). If you have never lived through this, you have never lived in France.

Personally, I am lucky, because I live and work on line number 1, which runs relatively well. But given that it has to accomodate all the people who ususally take other lines, that still means you have to squeeze in a wagon like cattle on their way to Chicago Market. After I panicked the first night on my way home, as more cattle kept entering the wagon to squeeze me just a little further each time, while Stephen tried to console me by pointing out how much worse it is in Tokio where people go through this every night to the point that some of the smaller folks are lifted from the floor their feet hanging in the air, I got off at Tuileries swearing that I would not set another foot in the metro while the strike was ongoing.

And I haven't. I am an old strike veteran and I know what to do. I borrowed a bike from Stephen the same night. The evening before the strikes resurged I went to Go Sport to buy some utensils that are good to have in Parisian traffic at night, such as light. Only I hadn't factored in how much vélib had changed Parisians' attitude towards bikes. Putting on an expert face people, who just a few weeks ago would not even have dreamt about riding a bike and probably don't know how, were inspecting all the biking accessories you can think of - or at least those that the rest of the locust swarm had forgotten in the shop. Not only lights were in high demand, but also helmets, although not by women with any self-esteem, because generally in France you loose your femininity the minute you start wearing comfortable shoes. Even those luminous shirts that help contruction workers not to get run over by cars while their are working boasted some fans. Luckily, I was swift and expert enough to catch one of the last lights that were any good. I also forgot about self-esteem, after all I am not French, and I went as far as buying a helmet. Like French women I have my aesthetical and practical reasons for not wearing them at home. You risk carrying them around in Berlin's bars and night clubs for the rest of the evening and this may well keep you from becoming that night's queen of the scene, not least because you have no hand free to hug the men whom you are kissing. But then again in Berlin it is the bike that is the king of the road. Here you have to take some precautions, or you may simply not get any chance anymore to kiss anyone at all.

Now I pedal every morning and every evening an hour, or an hour and a half, or so from Bastille to La Défense and back, and while I do, I have to fight my own battles with drivers losing their nerve in traffic jams. So it's not the case that you avoid battling when boycotting crowded metro lines. Nevertheless, I consider myself to be among the more mobile and luckier citizens of this city at the moment.

Sure enough, the strike does make small-talk more interesting, as it moves it a bit from trivial comments on today's weather to more interesting details of some of your latest adventures on your trips through the city or to the more philosophical question as to whether or not the train drivers are right to go on strike. Most of the angry commuters will tell you that they are not and that they themselves dislike becoming "hostages" of people who ask them for solidarity in their fight against a reform of a pension regime that allows its beneficiaries to start taking out a pension between 50 and 55, while the majority of the hostages has to work a little longer. But there are other voices. My friend Josiane thinks that the job situation of the lower and middle classes has not done anything but deteriorate over the last ten or twenty years, and rather than being openly hostile people should applaude those who stand up and fight for their acquired rights, not least because a number of the jobs on special pension regimes are physically harmful. As an example she likes to mention her brother who laquers buses day in and day out and with the laquer threatening to harm his respiratory system she thinks he should not be doing this job beyond age 55. To be sure, while this is probably true for her brother's profession, it is not for most the jobs covered by special pension regimes that have allowed people to retire early ever since the 19th century, when driving a train or burning the coal was indeed both physically demanding and harmful.

The heartthrob has another argument. To fully appreciate it you have to consider that he is a veteran of the young socialists' left wing who rejoiced upon the arrival of the current credit crunch because he believes it to be final stroke that is going to wipe out capitalism. He says, he hasn't understood the railway people to be fighting for an early pension for all those who are doing a physically straining or harmful job today, but he has understood them to be fighting for their own early pension, regardless of how straining their job is.

So maybe some of the people from far-away suburbs, who need to get to a job where they are only paid when they actually perform it, have a point when they say they have trouble feeling solidaric with the railway strikers.

On the other extreme, someone at work sent around a citation from a magazine that considered strikers to be bloody-minded, as they were defending their "excessive privileges". People at my workplace are exempt from paying income tax. They tend to live in rich suburbs and if there is no RER suburban train that brings them to La Défense, the only thing they have to do is pool places in their luxury cars and get up a little earlier to avoid the traffic jams. Considering this background, it does require some chutzpa to comment like that when people who hardly earn more than the minimum wage prefer giving it a try and fight to see whether they can rally some public support for their cause. They probably cannot, anyway. On the other hand, maybe the people at work would be happy to pay income tax without any protest if only they were asked to do so. That's a possibility.

Personally, I take the situation more like my friend Sébastien who says he likes it when things are not going so smoothly all the time. And I am sure that the strikes are good for public health, as people walk and bike more. Except you should not breath while in the streets as pollution has increased tremendously.