France:French transport workers have voted to strike for a third day today, even as union leaders consider a "method proposal letter" from minister of labour Xavier Bertrand.
"The minister's letter isn't precise enough about the content of the negotiations and the calendar," complained Didier Le Rest, the head of the train drivers' section of the communist union CGT.
Mr Bertrand wants to give unions, employers and the government one month to agree on pension reform, through piecemeal negotiations. If the present strike is suspended, there is nothing to guarantee it will not recommence if the talks go badly.
The same images of traffic jams and packed metro platforms continue to fill television news broadcasts, but the strike weakens by the day. Only 43 per cent of SNCF railway workers and 27 per cent of those from Paris transport company RATP went on strike yesterday.
The SNCF says that between trains and replacement buses, it will ensure half of normal traffic today. Mr Bertrand said the strike in electricity and gas companies was over, since only 2 to 3.5 per cent of their employees stopped work yesterday.
Union leaders are inclined to end the strike quickly. François Chérèque, the head of the socialist CFDT, said: "We have the elements to be able to suspend the strike at the SNCF."
However, the hardline rank and file refuses to accept the government's three non-negotiable requirements: 40 years of contributions to enjoy full retirement benefits, pensions being indexed to prices rather than current salaries and lower pensions for workers who missed contributions because they worked part-time, changed jobs or took time out to have children.
Why are nightmarish transport strikes such a deeply ingrained French institution? I asked historian of economics and Sorbonne professor Jacques Marseille.
"It goes back to the French revolution and the way capitalism and the industrial revolution occurred here," he said.
"The word 'capitalist' has always been considered an incitement to battle in France. All opinion polls show the French are hostile to the market economy and have little awareness of the fundamental mechanisms of economics. It's a character trait, part of our history. A strong proportion of French people have always considered the market economy the devil."
Paradoxically, the trade unions that wreak such havoc are weak, with only about 8 per cent of the workforce belonging to unions.
"The state has always wanted to destroy intermediate bodies - anything that could interfere in the direct relationship with the citizen. That includes trade unions," Prof Marseille said.
"Because they are weak, they can only exist through demands and confrontation. Their only power is to say, 'I can put so many people in the street'."
These two ingredients - traditional suspicion of capitalism and weak trade unions - "explain that at regular intervals France is unable to negotiate, discuss and approach problems in a rational, reasonable manner", added Prof Marseille.
What is true of the trade unions also holds for the opposition Socialist Party, which continues to decline since the loss of the presidential election.
"The weaker you are," Prof Marseille said, "the more extreme your diatribes. Rhetoric is of the final struggle between the forces of good and profit-hungry, dividend-greedy capitalists whose only concern is to suck the blood of workers."
He said France was at a turning point: "The French have understood that students [ who are blocking campuses in protest at reform of the university system] are manipulated by a tiny minority, that technicians at the Paris Opera are not in a dreadful situation and that trade unionists at the Banque de France are not serfs. This is the swansong of a vast coalition of egotisms, of the ancien régime."
Prof Marseille also said the strike would end quickly.
In the event it does not, he said he expected the right wing to organise a huge demonstration modelled on the million-strong march that supported President Charles de Gaulle in May 1968 or the 1984 march to maintain funding for private schools.
The non-payment of strike days also favours a quick resolution. "Traditionally in France, payment for strike days was part of the negotiations," Prof Marseille said, "but the practice has changed, and I don't think they have sufficient purchasing power to sustain a long strike."