Le jour de strike est arrivé

As everyone has probably heard, although the media seems to be making it more spectacular than it actually is, unions are on strike in France (once again!).

All in all, it seems to be in a perfectly democratic fashion that this law has been passed, raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. This age limit is quite low compared to the other European countries (which seem to be most comparable to France) such as Germany, the other continental giant. Germans are theoretically retiring at 65, and are asked, because of the baby-boomers’ generation coming to retirement age, to extend their working period to the age of 67 to support the backfiring of the golden age and its fertile decades. However, this does not seem to spark anything too violent at the other side of the Rhine. Why does it seem so outrageous for French people then?

Of course, one could argue that the typical grumpy Frenchman has intrinsic revolutionary ideas engraved within his genetic and historic heritage. This theory of course is merely a sociological and anthropological observation with no tangible empirical proof. But it’s true, French people like to moan and protest, like to frown and to insult their fellow citizens, but behind this curtain of impoliteness lies the classy, sophisticated and spirited Frenchman that we all know. Could the strikes be explained by this sociological account of the French people? Partly, yes. Maybe they just like to get together and protest. It probably reminds the working class of the good old days, when the communist party had a ‘class-identity’ – was led by proper leaders such as George Marchais, instead of postmen and revolutionary insects such as Besancenot and Laguiller – and made them see the world through red binoculars, while eating sausages with a drop of ‘Moutarde de Dijon’ in front of the ‘Palais Bourbon’.

This protest may be the result of  Sarkozy’s own controversial style of exposing himself to the press, something that he has done since his election in 2007. Doing so, he has on the one hand bragged about dating two consecutive models, but has also, on the other hand, exposed his personal background much more than any other president in the French presidential history. Having as best man at his wedding the seventh wealthiest person living on earth (LVMH, Louis Vuitton and Moet Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault) gives the people an impression of disenfranchisement from the working class man, or the French “Joe six-pack”. And this particular image lying there during the financial crisis just seems to make him, in the people’s mind, somehow responsible for it as well. At least that’s what I like to think; because if it is not the case, then the French are actually lazy.