On the same day the Elysée Palace announced he was divorcing his wife, massive strikes crippled the country's transportation network.

First, a word on the wife. Surely, Sarko can't be that easy to live with, but really, did former First Lady Cecilia really have to snub every single official event this summer? On one occasion, the Sarkozy family vacationing in New Hampshire was invited to Kennebunkport to lunch with Bush Jr and Sr (despise them or not, they're still current and former US presidents, it's not just your regular bbq). She pretended to have strep throat so she wouldn't have to go. When she was seen in shorts and a T-shirt running around town the next day, one can only imagine what the Quai d'Orsay had to do to avoid a full-fledged diplomatic incident.

The funnier part of this of course is the reporting of it in the press. Most outlets made it a point not to talk about anything until an absolutely, honest-to-goodness official announcement was made, and now that one has been made, most politicians are going out of their way to say "it's a private matter, I don't care". The French and their obsession on privacy...

As far as the strikes go, they're pretty much the same as usual. For those who haven't been following, there are about 4.2 public servants in France (vs. 18M private sector employees), working in various fields, such as the state-run railroad, education system, transit agencies, mines. Public servants have historically enjoyed better pension benefits, such as the right to retire after 37.5 years instead of 40 years, because their jobs were considered, for lack of a better word in English, burdensome.

I can imagine that to be true for a train conductor at the turn of the Century, what with loading coal into a huge furnace and all, but it's clearly not the case anymore. So every single government over the past 20 years (including Socialists) has tried to fix the situation but has always backed down in the face of strikes. So transit workers go on strike, paralyze the economy, and get what they asked for.

It's rather entertaining to hear their arguments, too. For example, "our jobs are really tough; imagine, we have to work flexible hours and night shifts and weekends!". Well, yeah, Lazy McSlacker, tell that to the restaurant workers, hot line operators, farmers, etc... But anyway, this time around, things appear like they may be different. The government has already unequivocally announced it will not back down (which is exactly what Sarkozy campaigned on), and only the more hardcore unions are proposing prolonging the strike.

Who knows, maybe France isn't doomed after all..

Labels: france