In Paris During Transit Strike

One of our subscribers was in Paris this past week during the transit strike, which is still ongoing. Here’s what he had to say:

“We tried to make the best of our trip - all in all, we probably lost 1 day of sightseeing because it took longer to do everything...but other than that...the trip was great.
We took the Air France bus from the airport to Etoile and then took the metro...and we used the bikes to go from one place to another - what a great concept - it was awesome...we had such a good time...being from New York -we are used to walking so we walked everywhere...
for our way back again - the hotel said it was a long wait for taxi and since we only had hand luggage - we went to arc de triumph and then took the Air France bus.

We had a really good time...thanks for sending the ebook anyway.”

For details about the bike service he refers to- click here: Bike Service Paris

The ebook he refers to is entitled: “A Selection of 80 Inexpensive and Good Paris Restaurants”. For a free copy click here: France Tours and then click on the free ebook offer.

The stakes are high in this transit strike. Since this is the first labor confrontation with the Sarkozy government, neither side wants to back down. Negotiations between the unions, government, and management (the companies involved are state owned) will begin tomorrow, Wednesday. For now only about 25% of the union members are on strike, but they are succeeding in stopping about 75% of the public transport. Polls say that most French people are on the side of the government. There was even a small march recently with demonstrators holding signs saying the strike was egotistical on the part of the unions. It has been ongoing for about a week which is unusual for strikes in France. They normally only last a day or two.

My guess is that the government or the state owned companies will offer some higher salaries but will not cave on the fundamental issue, which is to eliminate special retirement benefits for some government workers and make them have to work as long as everyone else in order to retire. We’ll see. If you are to be in Paris in the next week or so, keep an eye out on events. We'll have another post to update on Thursday, after the word is out on how the initial negotiations went.