France plays hooky

Tough times call for tough sacrifices. Economies everywhere, desperate to continue their uphill climb out of the global recession, have imbibed this sound logic, however grudgingly. The French, however, don’t seem agree with the conventional wisdom: strikes erupted this morning across the country in response to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal to bump the retirement age ...

Tough times call for tough sacrifices. Economies everywhere, desperate to continue their uphill climb out of the global recession, have imbibed this sound logic, however grudgingly. The French, however, don’t seem agree with the conventional wisdom: strikes erupted this morning across the country in response to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal to bump the retirement age from 60 to-gasp!-61 or 62.

Sarkozy has defended the new measure as a reasonable adjustment given increasing life expectancy. Indeed, he might be excused for merely following in the footsteps of his European colleagues-Germany recently raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. (Then again, these days any comparison to Angela Merkel may do more harm than help.)

So far, the French aren’t buying the President’s explanations, bringing the country to a near stand-still.  14 percent of teachers and 8 percent of hospital workers left work today to participate in protests, airport travel was disrupted, and even news agencies took a hit. NPR reported that "because there aren’t enough journalists available to deliver news bulletins, the main public radio news channel in Paris is playing pop music intermittently."

Clare Sestanovich and Sylvie Stein are researchers at Foreign Policy.

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