Unite, Comrades!
Workers are taking to the streets with pickets, outraged at the "damaging effects [of] proposed healthcare cuts and pay limits." Their act of protest, they intone, is "an event of national significance." France? Nope, it's the Wall Street Journal. In the stirring words of the walkout memo:
It is not every day that reporters for such an august, conservative publication leave their desks and take to the streets—and to the floor of the annual meeting—to protest publicly and to warn shareholders and directors that the newspaper is on a dangerous path.
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According to the OECD more work is lost per hour to labor strife in the U.S. than in France; I think this is partly because labor strikes in France tend to be huge, multi-party, but short (temporally) affairs, or intermittent (they strike once a week for two months), whereas labor strikes in the U.S. are smaller, but more long-lasting. My anecdotal reactions to length of US strikes has reinforced this view.
JB:
Yes, but a French work hour is worth more in terms of contribution to GDP, not so much because of GDP, but because of scarcity …:)
~dodges thrown cheese~
JB:
Yes, but a French work hour is worth more in terms of contribution to GDP, not so much because of productivity, but because of scarcity …:)
~dodges thrown cheese~
Jason Ligon,
I should have said more work hours per worker; I did not phrase my statement correctly. And I would agree that the government’s 35 hour work week – even with all the ways around it legally and otherwise – is not helpful. Chirac wants to get rid of such, and we will see if that happens. More to my point is that labor strikes are not really particular to France; and that how they manifest themselves has interesting consequences.
Indeed, when there was a fad of Halloween in the 1990s (now dead), the trick or treat it issue was dealt differently than in the US; the children acted like striking workers, and roved about asking for candy in groups, carrying banners, etc. 🙂
I say let them go!
The time of major national and international medial outlets is over.
The web has brought us the benefits of inexpensive many-to-many communications.
Who needs newspapers anyway?
Worth remembering the next time the WSJ bitches about unions.
They are not a disinterested party.
When’s the last time there was a knock-down, drag-em-out strike in the US? The last one I can remember was the Hormel strike, which was at least five years ago, if I remember correctly.
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