Life in France: C’est La Greve!

One of my French teachers, a native of France, thought it would be a fun idea to cover French clichés. I think she meant to say “stereotypes” because our exercises included constructing analogies such as America is to hot dogs as France is to croissants. One of the words on our exercise list was “la grève.” I had been learning French for 70 hours at that point and had never encountered this word yet. She stared at me blankly as she explained that a “grève” is a strike, and people in France really do strike a lot.

Since I moved to France in September 2014, I have encountered many grèves: mostly SNCF (trains) and Air France. Even when the local crêche goes on strike (day care center for young babies and toddlers), my classmate has to run home to collect his baby and can’t stay in school to work with us. My friends have missed trains, flights, classes, interviews, work, and who knows what else thanks to strikes that cause horrible ripple effects of delays and cancellations for days on end.

Fed up with being unpleasantly surprised by strikes, one of my classmates found this handy calendar for all the strikes in France: http://www.cestlagreve.fr/. Surprise! The calendar is constantly full! There’s always someone striking somewhere!

We wonder amongst ourselves, do the strikes really change anything? Are they effective?

This morning, in the wake of Air France’s latest strike, my departure flight for tomorrow was canceled. Earlier this year, my family visited me in Paris for graduation in the midst of the airline, trash collection, and metro strikes. Their departure flight was delayed and their return flight to the states was canceled. Both flights to Berlin for an interview faced long delays. And so forth.

Getting really sick of les grèves. How do French people deal? Is it so embedded in their life that they don’t even react anymore?