Strike action over Macron’s pensions plan brings major disruption to France
www.theguardian.com
Hundreds of thousands across transport, school and energy sectors rally against government scheme to raise retirement age to 64

Don't mind the :LIB: link, just one million people came out in Paris today, "hundreds of thousands" my arsecheecks.

It's been a wild couple of days in France, firefighters on strike burning tyres to trigger smoke alarms, electricians turning electric counters back to zero and then resealing them (allegedly cutting power to rich knobheads in the meantime), all ports being closed, and all that was just wildcat action in anticipation of the general stikes for today.

This is all to stop the government from raising the retirement age to 64, from where it is now, 62. Some union heads have murmured that in fact, they want it lowered to 60, as retribution.

Obviously the government has a huge hole in the budget because they want an overinflated army and they think this is a good way to pay for it. I don't even want to start pointing out how dumb of a move this is (the marginal productivity of a 62 year old will not be enough to pay for the fucking army's oil changes)

Honestly these are the biggest strikes that have happened in "the West" within my recollection.

edit: the small conservative Alsacian village I visited recently had their sole Burger King go on strike today so that's how "general" these general strikes are

edit2: oh yeah, some of the strikers were blasting the internationale, which is pretty common for this kind of stuff in France, but still, we love it folks, we love it

    • Aryuproudomenowdaddy [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, it is fun to dunk on people with Frenchness but I wish Americans were half as willing to do something meaningful in the face of degrading quality of life.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Fishing is notoriously volatile. In Alaska at least you usually work for shares of the catch. Which could be tens of thousands, or rarely hundreds of thousands in a good year. Or it could be almost nothing. The fisheries are overexploitated to the point of collapse. Several crab fisheries have been destroyed by bottom trawling. The government departments in charge of fisheries stand accused of over-counting to keep the fisheries open even as stocks become more and more depleted. In Alaska fishing fleets from Seattle sail up in to Alaskan waters and routinely violate Alaskan and federal regulations, fucking over indigenous Alaskan fishermen. It's all fucked.