Perhaps I am starting to lose count of how many times I have experienced grèves (strikes in French) ever since I arrived here in Grenoble. Let me recall. Firstly, we had a strike by CROUS BLEU which is an organisation in charge of student housing, meals and general welfare. The reason for the strike back then was the poor treatment from the CROUS director towards the workers in general and also to support a fellow worker who had apparently been physically assaulted/threatened by the director. And how did it affect me in particular? The RUs (restaurants universitaires, equivalent of canteens) were mostly closed, leaving only 1 or 2 operating minimally with minimal quality control. I could only recall having some bland tasting mashed potato from Restaurant Barnave.
Next, there was a manifestation by SNCF workers. SNCF is the company running the train network in France, famous for its super high speed TGV. Reason for the strike? Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly elected president, proposed a pension system reform which apparently put the SNCF workers at a disadvantage. At the end of World War 2, France put into place a "special regime" pension system for workers who worked in unfavourable conditions by allowing them to retire after paying pension contributions for 37.5 years instead of the 40 years demanded from normal workers. The government has to pump in 5 million euros a year into special pension funds, and this has caused huge deficits. Of course, discontentment arose given the known fact that the French has always been "spoilt" with the past welfare system. So the transport network in the whole of France was paralysed and the strike continued for 3 days. This was the biggest strike in France in nearly a decade.
And Monsieur Sarkozy said he would not back down on his economic reform plans.
So the French is on strike again, starting from yesterday night at 20h and this will last until Thursday evening 20h. Great, this time round I am severely affected because I have already made plans to leave for Interlaken on Thursday morning. The original train that I wanted to take is obviously not running on Thursday. Panic. Panic. I have already reserved hostels in both Interlaken and Lucerne. I was told by an SNCF worker in the gare that I had to wait until Thursday morning itself to find out if there is a train running to Swiss. This simply means that I risk being charged the first night of my hostel in Interlaken unless I cancel my booking on Wednesday (like now!). But, phew, in the end I found out from the SNCF website that there would be an alternative train that runs to Genève (my transit point to Interlaken) but I would take about 3 hours more than predicted to reach Interlaken. Better than cancelling my whole trip, I thought.
Interestingly, at the same time of the 2nd SNCF strike, the students in Grenoble also went on strike for two reasons: 1) to support the SNCF workers and 2) to protest against university privatisation plans by the new Ministry of Education. On Tuesday, they had this big student meeting called "Assemblé Générale" to decide on whether to block the school compound on Wednesday. And so they voted to go on strike. Unfortunately, the students in engineering schools like mine cannot be bothered by politics. So, while my friends from UJF and UPMF have a free day, I still have class later in the day (not that I am complaining since my timetable is already quite slack =P).
Vandalism on the walls around the campus. It means (L-R): General Strike Uprising & Autonomy is not a law, it is an open struggle against the state.
L-R: Entrances to the schools were blocked (spot the shopping trolleys?)
And guess what, the teachers are planning to go on strike next week on 20 Nov. The apparent reason is to protest against a plan by the government to cut 22,000 jobs from the public sectors next year. We'll see how big this strike will be.
Welcome to the French national sport! =D
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