grieving for the grève

Other than their croissants, the Eiffel Tower, and arguably Jean Reno, perhaps the most well-known Franco-image that the French has ever exported has to be their strikes.

Geddit? Think of gays, and the French come first to mind. Think of strikes, and the French also has to be the usual suspect.

It is amazing that how a country is able to stay so nonchalant when its direct neighbours are like über-efficient to the core. Oh wait, Malaysia DOES come to mind. But its not Malaysia's turn tonight, so let's switch our focus back to the French.

Tomorrow we're going to have a strike by the CROUS-Rhône Alpes personnel. CROUS stands for "Centre Régional des Oeuvres Universitaires et Scolaires", and is basically responsible for the daily lives of all the university students in France. In short, they are the people in charge of my accommodation and school food. Therefore when they strike, we are going to see some hungry people on campus tomorrow. =P

And what are they striking for?

The usual suspects come to mind again: Too much work (hey its a 35 hour work week here) with too little pay, not enough respect given (yes its a legitimate reason), amongst the other more inventive reasons; Although I suspect that it is just to take a day off and have some fun. Who wouldn't like to play a practical joke every now and then just to harass their superiors?

But the good thing is that every strike is pre-warned and the people on strike make it a point to minimize their impact on the innocent populace. I was caught in a transport strike in Lyon last year, but I was still able to get to school (what luck! damn..) as there were nice transport personnel explaining to us the other ways of getting to our destinations. So as you can see below, this was how I found out about the strike which is going to be held tomorrow.

en grève = on strike

the logo of Organised Labour.. doesn't it look like the Ironman M-Dot just raised his hand? =P

The French like these sort of things. A strike smacks of collectivism, of rebelliousness, of lower-class-good against upper-class-evil. And the French likes it when the underdog wins. And so life goes on admist the strikes. Students will still go to school, baguettes will still be baked and eaten, and the next strike will still be planned.

Very uniquely français indeed.