Two Tuesday’s ago marked day one of a strike in Paris involving a multitude of different public transportation workers and since then it has only escalated.
Backpacking through Europe this summer has been one of the greatest adventures of my life and, while I expected there to be hiccups, I never anticipated a three-day spontaneous trip to Luxembourg after all means of getting to Paris became unavailable.
Paris’ ultrafast, ultra sleek TGV rail service is renown throughout
the country as the best in the biz, but with workers on strike even the
smaller, regional trains are joining in, creating huge transportation issues
throughout the area. At the beginning of the strike only one in three trains
in France were running, and it has now spread to Spain where only half the trains
are running.
The protests began just one week before France’s National
Assembly was scheduled to meet to speak about reforms to solve the debt crisis surrounding the rail network and services, and the reform plans that were scheduled to open up the rail system to competition and unite the National Society of French Railways (SNCF) with the French Rail Network (RFF), which
has accumulated over 32 billion euros
in debt. If nothing is done about this, it is predicted that the debt will
reach 80
billion euros by 2025.
The leaders of the strike have said that workers will not return to work until there is a written guarantee from the
government for a modified reform, one that would ensure jobs and
wages. The protests have spread, with commuters teaming up against
the strikers, claiming that the disruption to their lives is not worth the
minimal effects of a modified reform. Now that France is entering the second week of strikes, and
this has become the longest
public rail dispute in memory, the government is becoming even more firm on
its resolve not to back down. This week, however, it will be taken to the
courts and we shall see who comes out on top!
These protests are, unfortunately, coinciding with massive
protests across Europe about the Uber app, a car sharing network that
allows you to find a place in someone’s car who is going the same place as you
for just a little money for gas. Taxi drivers from London and Barcelona to
Paris are protesting
the app saying that it is a detriment to their livelihood. They are
asking for tougher regulations on the San Francisco-based mobile app. The largest of these protests, to date, has been in
London, where black-cab drivers were joined by private car services to protest
what they saw as a failure to hold Uber drivers to the same standards as cab
drivers, who need a license to drive that can cost up to $270,000
apiece. These protests have even gone so far as windshield smashing and
traffic chaos in Paris, further leading to a total public transportation
meltdown. Today, the vast majority of Paris’ professional taxis, cabs and trains
are on strike.