By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

PARIS, France – This is what happens when the trains don’t run.

Traffic backs up. The streets clog with cars, taxis, Ubers, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles as people seek ways to cover long distances on something other than their own two feet.

The sidewalks jam up, too. What would have been short trips on the metro – a stop or two – now become opportunities for a stroll. In the busiest parts of town, people walk brushing shoulders and have stopped apologizing or asking pardon when they bump into one another.

Such is life.

France has been in the middle of a rail strike for the past three weeks.

The trigger for the strike was a proposed government plan to alter pension programs. The new system, if it becomes a reality, would eliminate special retirement plans and create a points-based system that applies to all. The goal is to encourage French workers to labor longer.

That is not an easy sell in a culture in which people believe life is something to savor, not endure.

Hence, the strike.

Since the labor action began on Dec. 5, travel and life in France have been disrupted in equal measure. This has been particularly true during the holidays, as train after train after train has been cancelled. Travelers who hoped to make it in or out of Paris or elsewhere found themselves stuck at the starting point or, worse, stranded somewhere between home and their desired destination.

Alternative travel options were few.

Rental agencies ran out of cars early. Taxi drivers to and from Charles de Gaulle Airport began balking at charging the flat rate of 50 Euros to transport passengers into Paris because the traffic snarls and gridlock cost them too much time – and money.

In Paris, only those few metro lines that are automated continue to operate, over the protests of strikers who have begun showing up to prevent people from boarding even those trains that still are scheduled to run.

Despite all this upheaval, even turmoil, public support for the strike is strong.

Polls show that more than 50 percent of those surveyed support the strike and only a little more than 30 percent oppose it. That support has remained steady even as holiday travel has descended into chaos and tourism in France has been hammered.

An acquaintance who has led an expatriate experience here in Paris for years explains why.

“The right to strike is embedded as deeply in the French culture as the right to bear arms is in the States,” she says.

Interesting.

It’s tempting to compare the two cultural obsessions to America’s disadvantage. The rail strike, after all, seems to encourage more people to walk, which is healthy. The U.S. devotion to unlimited access to firearms seems to encourage more people to shoot each other, which isn’t.

But the reality is that they are two sides of the same coin.

When issues become questions of personal or national identity, resolving them becomes much more difficult.

In the States, the question about guns confronting us actually is a narrow one – how do we keep firearms out of the hands of those who can’t use them responsibly while making sure those who are responsible still have access? – but the emotional energy on both sides makes rational discussion and problem-solving all but impossible.

Similarly, to an outsider, the divide over the French problem seems like a resolvable dispute. If the goal is to get people to work longer, give them a reason to work longer. Create incentives for them to work longer. At its most effective, capitalism offers an array of enticements, not penalties. We work because we want something – more money, a nicer house, a new car or, for most of us, a better life for those we love.

Emotion, though, may get in the way of that national negotiation, too.

So long as it does, the streets and sidewalks of this loveliest cities will remain packed.

And Paris will continue to be the place where the trains don’t run.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.