Around 30,000 people protest in Grenoble, January 29, during France’s first major strike triggered by the global financial crisis.


France on Strike

January 29, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com
As the economy goes down, the French revive their national pastime.

Hundreds of thousands of French workers are going on strike this afternoon as unions and opposition leaders protest their government’s handling of the economic crisis. Train drivers, air traffic control operators, teachers, postal workers, bank employees and ski lift operators, to name a few, will refuse to work.

These protests will cause massive disruption. In some places, only one in five trains will be operating. Despite this, the general strike is very popular. One poll found that almost 70 percent of those surveyed support, or sympathize with, the strike.

Many fear this could be the beginning of more than just one day of strikes. “I feel a violence being born,â€