En Grève: On Strike in France
A Digital Postcard from The South of France
The French love to protest. We’ve lived at La Melonne since May and every Wednesday and Saturday we’ve had a gilet jaune protest outside our house. There’s a constant barrage of honking as people pass the occupied roundabout and toot their support.
My favourite protester is the topless guy on a couch reading Camus in the sun. He doesn’t raise his head to acknowledge another toot but simply raises his fist. A loud hailer makes sure we know what they’re saying. For us, as new parents, the sing-along-rap-concert one Friday was particularly vexing as we tried in vain to get young Teddy to sleep. Lying in bed, I have felt the temptation to don some high-viz, grab a bottle of wine, and join the revolution. It’s been strange to live in a constant state of protest. As Charlotte’s aunty said, ‘France is in a bad mood’.
Now, we are in the fourth week of a fuel crisis. French energy giant Total Energies has been brought to its pinstriped knees by CGT trade union. The rabble union is en grève to protest high inflation and the high profits that have not been passed on to the conglomerate’s employees. The strike at the refineries means no fuel at the pump. Many fuel stations are either out of fuel, have only one variant (diesel) or have huge queues.
Perhaps most alarming is that the FNME-CGT union has voted to strike meaning a delay in maintenance to 13 French nuclear reactors. Further, the fuel crisis strike has been the catalyst for the French civil service workers’ unions to strike too. Today, Tuesday, there is a general strike in France to demand higher wages against the highest inflation rate in decades.
What does the fuel crisis mean for us?
We’ve currently got a full tank of gas. I managed to snaffle a load as it came fresh off the truck one Friday evening. Unfortunately, there’s no story of me, dressed all in black, passing over a bottle of pastis and a carton of gauloise to the truck driver at midnight. Charlotte simply rang the combined fuel station supermarket and received a hot tip from one of the employees as to when the next shipment would arrive. I managed to get the maximum 30L and then go round again to fill the remainder of the tank, all in under an hour. This was fortunate as many people have waited hours in line.
I'm old enough to remember the oil shocks of the 1970s which also precipitated inflation and strikes. In the first shock President Nixon instituted price freezes which failed to resolve the problem. He left office for entirely different reasons. President Carter responded to the second oil shock by instructing people to lower the heater and put on a wool jumper. That went over like a lead balloon. He later created the Carter Doctrine that states oil will be kept in generous supply by all means necessary. But by then he was already halfway out the door of the White House. Reagan's Morning in America followed. Drill baby drill. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. Today we have vague notions of an energy transition away from oil that I suspect is doomed. You can run a perfectly respectable civilization without oil, but it won't look anything like the one we have now. So... En Grève.