Gros Grève

Question of the week has been: Will it be like 1995?

In 1995, then Prime minister Alain Juppé under president Chirac tried to introduce a new plan that included changes to pension rules. Some workers in the public sector who normally were allowed to retire at the age of 50 after 37.5 years of service will have to now complete 40 years of service just like in the private industry. This plan was supposed to help the deficit of France's social security system and make France more competitive in the European economy.

As a response to the government, the national railroad and subway workers went on strike---a strike that ended up lasting three-weeks. Those three-weeks, Paris was paralyzed.

Fast forward to present day, president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to implement the same change. So back in September five of the eight unions decided to strike on Oct 17th----but then they realized that the 17th was UN's official World Poverty Day so they switched it to Oct 18th. So this past Thurs was the strike---thanks to the strike I decided to take an unofficial day off from school (yAY! like a snow day!). I told my teacher since I lived in Boulogne (which means it usually takes 40 minutes to get to school), I wouldn't be coming to class (because I'd have to walk for two hours for a two hour class and walk back).

In Boulogne, everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary---I guess I was expecting huge crowds of people walking or lots of car traffic, etc. but there was none of that. I think everyone just decided to stay home that day.

BUT Friday... Oct 19th, the second day of the strike, some metros were running and that was worse than having no metros running. I checked on www.ratp.fr site every so often to see if my line was running. Sometimes it said ligne 9: 1 rame sur 6. sometimes it said ligne 9: fortement perturbé. sometimes it said ligne 9: 1 rame sur 3. So I decided to give it a shot. At the station, you normally use your ticket to get through by take the top ticket (in the picture) and put it through a machine. below is my monthly pass:
But I got to the station and ALL the doors were open, no ticket needed, no on at the counter to buy a ticket from, and I was like... SWEET. and then realized, well that makes sense since metros aren't guaranteed to run at all.

I was waiting for my metro and it said the next one was in 12 min. That was a shock. Usually, metros come in 2 min, 5 min, or at MOST like late late at night 15 min. But it was mid-day. Anyways, I waited and I was afraid that the whole metro would be jam packed (as warned by my host mom)... but when it finally came, to my disappointment, was pretty empty. =\ I wanted to experience a strike in Paris!

Hah, so five stops after mine on the metro, I was SQUISHED because people kept coming in! And by the seventh stop, I was experiencing the awkward situation of not being able to hold onto a pole because it's too far from reach, being squished between bodies and sort of swaying between them for balance, watching people TRY to push onto the metro when they obviously canNOT, and seeing this one dude squeeze onto the metro, holding his bags on top of his head because there was no way for him to put it down... it was very unpleasant feeling to say the least, but very funny (I just couldn't believe I was in the middle of all that). So THIS is what a strike is like... I so wanted to take a picture then but I couldn't reach into my bag to get my camera since there was no room to move.

I ended up doing a transfer to line 14 (which is automated =)) to avoid all the crowded people but had to walk 40 minutes to where I needed to be. But it was an awesome walk, because I was in no rush. So I ended up taking pictures of little random things in Paris that I think I'd miss.

Ah... I have some awesome pictures to post but blogger is not letting me right now. I'll try again later.