I didn't go to school last Thursday because my schools were closed. No, it wasn't a holiday and we didn't have a snow day. My schools were closed because my teachers decided to strike. Many, though not all, teachers stayed at home on Thursday to express their discontent with the government's plan to eliminate some teaching positions. On Tuesday, teachers taped signs to the windows saying "For the future of our school, for the future of our students we're going on strike Thursday." A number of teachers staged a protest on Thursday afternoon to help bring awareness to their cause.
From an American perspective, this whole thing seems a little outrageous. Teachers very rarely go on strike in the States. A teachers' strike would leave working parents scrambling to find somewhere for their kids to spend the day. I don't think a teacher's strike would be received very sympathetically in the States. Rather, it's likely society and of the media would find the idea of striking - under the pretext of showing how much one cares about the future of the students - quite hypocritical.
But in France, strikes are a part of life, the primary way to express labor discontent. I get the impression that if the teachers didn't strike, their concerns would not really be considered legitimate. I think the attitude might be, Oh, well, maybe they're upset, but if they're not willing to strike about it they must not be that upset.
That's not to say that I'm convinced the strikes really do anything besides giving the TV crews something to film. Strikes are so common in France that they don't really carry the same weight as they do in other countries. And it seems to me like the government can't make any change without getting somebody upset and having them call a strike. It's just an accepted cost of making change, but an expensive one. My roommate who works for SNCF, the French railroad company, says each day the company's workers go on strike, it costs the company 20 million euros.
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