PARIS: Hundreds of thousands of French teachers and civil servants staged a one-day strike throughout the country Thursday to protest government plans to cut jobs in the public sector. While the unions and the government differed sharply over the numbers taking part, many thousands of teachers, students, parents and civil servants stayed off the job. For example, union leaders said that at least 60 percent of the 740,000 teachers in France were on strike; the government said the figure was 34.4 percent, while 24.8 percent of 2.5 million state employees were on strike. In Paris, organizers said 50,000 people had demonstrated, while the police said the figure was closer to 18,000. There were also large demonstrations in Marseille, Toulouse and Strasbourg. It was another test of President Nicolas Sarkozy's resolve in his efforts to cut down the large civil service to reduce budget deficits and create more competition in the economy. There will be more strikes to come, including one on May 22 called by the powerful transport unions, which will probably halt train, airline and subway service across the country.
PARIS: Hundreds of thousands of French teachers and civil servants staged a one-day strike throughout the country Thursday to protest government plans to cut jobs in the public sector.
While the unions and the government differed sharply over the numbers taking part, many thousands of teachers, students, parents and civil servants stayed off the job.
For example, union leaders said that at least 60 percent of the 740,000 teachers in France were on strike; the government said the figure was 34.4 percent, while 24.8 percent of 2.5 million state employees were on strike.
In Paris, organizers said 50,000 people had demonstrated, while the police said the figure was closer to 18,000. There were also large demonstrations in Marseille, Toulouse and Strasbourg.
It was another test of President Nicolas Sarkozy's resolve in his efforts to cut down the large civil service to reduce budget deficits and create more competition in the economy. There will be more strikes to come, including one on May 22 called by the powerful transport unions, which will probably halt train, airline and subway service across the country.
It was another test of President Nicolas Sarkozy's resolve in his efforts to cut down the large civil service to reduce budget deficits and create more competition in the economy.
Can someone explain to me how reducing the number of teachers would create more competition in the economy, unless the State has decided to give up on being the provider of education. Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi
'Competition' means 'important people get stuff, unimportant people don't.'
It's about constricting the availability of services, not about providing them.
Of course the debate has moved on to that "minimum service" concept in general (on the line that "public service should not be at the whim of corporatist unions) and to the political debate of who would pay for such an obligation (which becomes quickly a constitutional debate about what are the rights of obligations of cities vs cnetral government, and a partisan one as more cities are controlled by the left). In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
