PARIS — French rail unions Sud Rail, CGT, and CFDT have called for a national strike by rail workers on July 6, Reuters reports.
The unions said in a joint statement that workers “are sharply hit by exploding inflation. We must act to obtain wage increases.”
The French call for a strike came as most rail service in the United Kingdom was being disrupted by strikes by most unions that began June 21 [see “Britain hit by biggest rail strike since 1990s,” Trains News Wire, June 21, 2022]. The UK unions had scheduled three days of strikes in June, the last on Saturday, June 25, but reportedly plan more in July.
Sacre Bleu! Yes, the French do seem to frequently be “on-strike” (that is, when they’re not on a 4-6 week summer “vacation”)
Gerald McFarlane: Yes, one does not “combat inflation” by raising wages to match the rate of inflation. From the employees’ perspective, ultimately they would need wage increases well above the rate-of–inflation” to keep ahead of inflation and not lose ground in terms of income (and spending power). From the employer’s perspective, in order to accommodate wage-increases from union-demands necessitates they raise prices, which of course fuels more inflation in a vicious spiral (and higher prices/higher inflation and thus drives employees and their unions to push for higher wages, thus pushing the inflation “spiral” ever higher).
Sadly, our policy-makers (at least here in the U.S. if not in western Europe) didn’t seem to understand this basic economic concepts while they were printing ever more ‘fiat’ money and keep ultra-accommodative monetary policy.
No country ever “printed” more money on its way to prosperity .,…..
“Modern Monetary Policy” is sure insanity …………
Well, here our leader stated “the budget will balance itself”
You don’t combat inflation by raising wages to match the rate of inflation…that only exacerbates the problem and leads to even greater inflation, but stupid is as stupid does(meaning the French railway workers, same as the U.K. railways workers).
Long ago, TRAINS MAGAZINE had an article about the most overrated railroads. SNCF made the list for being always on strike.