Surprising absolutely no one, Paris airport worker unions have announced a strike to begin days before the Summer Olympics there. Starting July 17, these strikes come in advance of the July 26 Olympics start date, and demand an “Olympics bonus” for all workers from the government-controlled company that operates both Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.
Paris Orly Airport
This is a joint effort by the CGT, CFDT, FO, and UNSA unions timed to create maximum disruption. A previous strike call on May 19th was less effective.
French government worker unions broadly are demanding extra pay during the Olympics, which overlaps the summer holiday period in France. This includes police, air traffic controllers, trash collectors, metro and train drivers, and firefighters.
The French Senate adopted a bill on April 9 that would allow the state to ban transport strikes during major events like the Paris Olympics. This bill also called for more advance warning of strikes and increased minimum service obligations. However, it has not been adopted by the French National Assembly. And, in an interesting twist, the left-wing New Popular Front won the most seats in national elections this month – despite receiving a substantially smaller portion of the vote than right wing National Rally and allied parties.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party received, by far, the most votes in France’s election today, but only won the third most amount of seats.
The French people wanted to take back their borders and sovereignty, instead they got communism. We can’t vote our way out of this. pic.twitter.com/ZY7B3Y6OpO
— Cillian (@CilComLFC) July 8, 2024
Air France has complained that the Olympics is a drag on profitability – that hotels are making out well, but that business travel lags and even many leisure travelers stay away. But isn’t the real message here, “so what’s new?” And more importantly, where are the French tech companies? The U.K. is a basket case, but London still matters greatly on the world stage. Does France?
I remember when hosting the Olympics was a matter of national pride. An opportunity to show the world what a great country you are as visitors saw and TV showcased the beauty and wonder of the host country. Striking would be a national embarrassment. Effective maybe, but it’s a selfish money grab. No national pride at all. Good luck to LA in 4 years!!
Check the facts – the UK is in no way a basket case. Yes there are issues but compared with the rest of Europe it’s doing rather well.
France on strike in the holidays – some traditions never die
The Olympics are a huge waste of money, an ecological affront, and should end or at the very least, be staged in the same location each time, dedicated to its use.
There is plenty of time before the Olympics for the French to surrender.
The French are just a bunch of land burning, work shy peasants
My plans usually include me being in France during the days that are covered this year by the Olympics. I decided last year to leave earlier this year than normal, fearing strikes and protests. Without making a comment on the result of yesterday’s voting on France’s future, I was so pleased to see no major signs of vandalism as I ventured out this morning. (The left won local districts, so that, combined with a nationwide “most seats,” probably kept the window smashers at bay.)
What’s the over-under on the government caving to their demands? I want in on that acation!
Finally an Olympic story I find interesting….
France is over. Finished. I mean – it will still take some more time, this doesn’t happen in a day, but in a few decades it will be unrecognizable.
The elections yesterday are just another goalpost in that process.
@Gary, In the second round of voting yesterday, you had a choice in your district between the two top vote recipients in the first round plus anybody else receiving 12.5% of the vote (the divisor on that equation is registered voters). In many cases, the RN (right) was first or second. That was the big news that scared the center-left. Frequently, during the last week, the third-place Ens (center) or NFP (left) candidate dropped out so the first or second-place Ens or NFP candidate had a better chance. I don’t know the numbers, but in many districts your choices were RN vs. Ens or RN vs. NFP. So, many NFP supporters had to vote RN or Ens. Many Ens supporters had a choice of RN or NFP. I assume a lot of them took the latter choice in each case.
“New Popular Front won the most seats in national elections this month – despite receiving a substantially smaller portion of the vote ”
Yes but there are 577 different contutencies, it is per each one and only one winner, not per the full amount of votes additionned at the national level.
Go French union workers! Give the world a really solid reason to hate you. What a bunch of peasants.
@Bob – you’re making my point
July and August were a poor choice for holding the games in Paris. The weather is hot and those who can abandon the city for more pleasant climes.
Granted the Olympics were slated for France several years ago. Still it can’t be that those planning the Olympics were unaware of French workers tendency to strike. It looks as if those responsible for the Maginot Line were in charge of planning for the Olympics.
Let’s hope those who can grant the workers’ demands give in and that the Olympics will go on as planned. Later, the additional pay granted for the Olympics should be taken back and the workers, if dissatisfied, allowed to strike.
Uh, what’s your point? You combined several random thoughts/ideas about France in an effort to do what? I need to stop clicking on articles with anything other than an announcement for some award seats or a new credit card perk as your other pieces really have no value.
Umm, @Gary, with all due respect, your point was neither well-articulated nor able to clearly explain how & why the voting populace moved en masse & make this a direct connection to how millions of people voted. While I disagree with allowing strikes to occur during important events/times, I’d say these issues deserve two clearly explained posts, vs. smushing together into one.
Britain, France, Germany….Their general direction is clear, but it remains to be decided which one will eventually settle as a People’s Republic and which one as an Islamic Republics.
@Charlene Ploss – I wasn’t trying to explain why the French populace shifted their voting behavior, nor why that wasn’t fully reflected in the outcome of the election.
Great time for a strike to get what they want. Chaos for higher wages.
It’s the French. They stand up for what they believe in. They don’t let industries and hyper-capitalism rule them. They are to be admired for standing up for their principles.
There’s nothing “principled” about their position. “Principles” require one to adhere to a certain truth or rule and requires following moral and ethical standards. Those traits are wholly missing here.
It’s France. “Nuff said.
@James N – and sadly the same could well happen in the U.S. with the next election.
@ ChadMC “They are to be admired for standing up for their principles.” That is true. They will stand by those “principles” so long as it costs them little. And, stand up for a “principle” that makes them more money? Sure, they can.
If the UK were a state in the US, wouldn’t it rival Mississippi in being the poorest state per capita in the Union?
The peasants party in France is the far-right party headed by Le Pen and her boy wonder Jordan B. The RN/FN are the successor to the party of the earlier party of the notorious antisemitic Islamophobic Jean Marie Le Pen.
Macron’s Ens party are center-right.
Don’t be surprised if we see Francois Hollande back but as PM.
@GUWonder “If the UK were a state in the US, wouldn’t it rival Mississippi in being the poorest state per capita in the Union?”
A statistic I did not know but it seems to check out using nominal GDP per capita for the last several years.
Europe in general has fallen increasingly behind the US economically over the last decade, and the Brits scored an own goal with Brexit to top it off.
Europe just isn’t growing like the US has, and so it’s not surprising to see Europe increasingly behaving like the areas in the US where socio-economic development has stagnated more so than in the country as a whole and see the rise of the politics of “white anxiety” come with that. Europe is full of MAGA equivalents — and France no less so than the US in that regard.
@Dal7910. Brevity, and you obviously studied history. One can read the whole future of mankind by reading the past.
@GUWonder yes and it’s higher than France, but also useful to break UK out regionally as well..
France will survive. My word, there is such an underlying, overtly bitter and menacing sentiment in the US towards others, countries and most scientific things that they don’t understand. Americans don’t know real poverty and rough times. Not the modern generations.
Europe’s problem is that even the EU can’t actually get their act together to have a real common market with the economies of scale required to really make things fly. There is an intrinsic European hostility to centralization and federalization that would empower the EU level institutions over the EU member state institutions. It is so much easier and faster to build a business that serves 50 states in the US than to try do the same thing across all the EU member states. Because of “too much” “state’s rights” in practice along with much more division culturally between and within member states.
I would say EUropeans don’t know real poverty and economic hard times any more than Americans. Have you seen what rural poverty is like in the American South? What I’ve seen in Mississippi and elsewhere in the American South when I was a “Deep in the Heart of Texas” kid singer/clapper was the kind of poverty that I have not seen to be as bad in any parts of the EU that have had per capita incomes at or above Mississippi at some point during the last 20 years.
Leave it to the French unions to try to exploit the Olympics for their own gain. The French are constantly on strike. These unions are clowns though. It is the international stage. These athletes have been training almost their entire lives for the opportunity to compete and now they got to deal with this garbage?
Delta has said that the Olympics have cost it $100 million because of a drop in demand for flying to Paris during the peak summer period.
I suspect that not many will care about because it is France’s problem to fix and it may take some time for their government to appease everyone over there,even though it was long ago since the incident with the farmers Uprising. I can also imagine that a lot of peoples are not gonna show much interest in the Olympics either because now adays it is becoming more politicized and that tends to turn peoples off