Here Comes the Strike!

Like the weather or traffic report in any normal country, France has politely informed us that a strike is impending tomorrow.

I bought a newspaper on Sunday, a copy of Le Parisien to read in my French class, and a good excuse to spend more time subtly gloating over the rugby loss that was splashed across the front page.

Of course, I gave up on the paper within a few minutes (although I'm proud to report that I understood a comic), but Dave spent a good amount of time reading it. That's when he found that the paper lists the week's upcoming grèves, or strikes. How nice of them, we thought. Then we promptly ignored the details of the list because we foolishly thought we wouldn't be affected.

Then a few days ago Guillaume warned me that we had to leave for work early on Thursday because of the upcoming train strike ("Don't you Americans read the newspaper?"). All of the metro and RER drivers are going on strike tomorrow. Apparently they're mad because the government wants to change the minimum number of years they have to work before retirement.

Back when the Paris trains first started, driving one was a physically challenging job. So they used to offer retirement to train drivers early. But these days, metro drivers sit on comfy chairs and use joysticks to get from one stop to another. So the government wants to even things out, and they're not happy.

And in a show of support, the Air France pilots will also be on partial strike (I wonder if the psychological tests for flight school hopefuls will be on hold). They all stick together, it seems. Who knows who else will be striking, I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

So how does all of this affect us? Well, Guillaume patiently explained, there will be no trains tomorrow. So everyone will be DRIVING. Oh yeah.

The HR department at David's work sent out an e-mail warning employees of the strike and encouraging them to carpool tomorrow. On the drive home, the highway traffic signs warned that tomorrow, driving will be difficult. France doesn't have hurricanes, so they batten down for strikes.

Guillaume and I both worked late today, so I offered him a ride into Levallois-Perret this evening so he could metro home into Paris. Halfway here he received a phone call from a friend telling him that the strike was starting at 8 p.m. tonight. Suddenly, he was gripping the dashboard and begging Dave to speed up. We finally pulled up to the metro station at about 7:45 and he burst out of the car like a man dashing for a fallout shelter.

For the rest of the 5 minute ride home, we noticed how many people were on foot and on bicycles. It seemed the whole city was on edge, waiting for la grande grève.

David and I are planning on leaving for work 30 minutes early tomorrow. If anything else interesting happens with this whole strike business, I'll be sure to let you know.