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Yeah go, France. What are we protesting this week?

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And remember that's "just" for increasing the pension age from 62 to 64. No I ask myself what such a society would do then facing the dire situation of workers rights in the US.

As one WAG said, it's a shame they don't work as hard as they protest!!!!

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I heard you have a right to work.

I am currently admiring the French. They kind of seem like one of the few modern nations where the citizenry actually give a shit about democracy.

I wish we had that attitude in North America.

Macron just forced a decree to decrease the size of a jar of Nutella.

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Okay, the increase of retirement age was bad but THIS MEANS WAR!

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I wish US citizens were this stern on things, we may have worker rights if we did.

Well if people protest here, then the right will just label it as riots again like did they in 2020. So basically we have to comply or shut up with the rules or risk being demonized by the right wingers and their media.

If anybody who is percieved as being left or liberal doing anything they get demonized by the right wing scream machine so might as well jump.

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People died to get an 8 hour work day and weekends. We used to have unions everywhere to protect and fight for those rights. Those are heroes that defended our freedoms that nobody talks about any more. Meanwhile, we're rolling back child labor laws. imo we should be rioting too, regardless of what the merchant class has to say about it. That being said I'm pessimistic about that.

Here's my issue with that... who the fuck cares? The right wing in the US at this point is not living in reality. They have no rational thought or reason. They're gonna demonize people regardless, so who gives a fuck what they say or do? They demonize a candy company for making their candy less fuckable, I don't really care what they think about protestors or much anything else beyond how to keep them from murdering people who don't agree with them.

I see some people from.france say its more that he passed reform.without vote.

I mean it isn't Just the 2 years. It's that we are going in the WRONG direction. All this work. Over generations. And we are going backwards!?

We aren't working to invest in the progress of our people but the continue subjugation of ourselves and our children to be exploited by a minority Owner Class.

You're of course right. My comment was cutting pretty short for the sake of catchiness. And as it was mentioned as well coming on top of your points is the really undemocratic way this change was pushed through, bypassing the Parlament. This all makes for a very explosive mixture.

I'm sorry if it seamed that I do not take this seriously enough. This was not my intention.

This is of course a very big factor. My comment was cutting very short for the sake of catchiness. But pushing such a reform around the Parlament makes for a highly explosive mixture.

I think part of the problem is that people have been too impoverished to be able to protest. Sure you can fight for your right, but then you and your family might starve to death.

And with unions being busted all over the place there is no recourse for it.

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Workers' rights are being destroyed in France too, don't worry. Macron will make sure of that.

Yes it's an accumulation of reforms aimed at destroying worker's rights in France. Plus the destruction of public services, which were not working very well to start with. Many French people are fed up, but alas many still support Macron. He really has managed to convince these dumb fuckers that the only alternative is the Rassemblement National...

>They kind of seem like one of the few modern nations where the citizenry actually give a shit about democracy.

Not really. They wouldn't have elected Macron a second time otherwise.

It’s not just that.

• heavy duty work do not qualify anymore for compensation which is why bin men are striking
• to get your full pension, you must work without any stop from your 20s to your 60s. No illness, break, year off whatsoever
• point 2 implies you must make a choice very early in life wether you want an under educated job or a masters degree and so forth.
• all of the above with no guarantee that it all won’t happen again while you’re not even yet 64. Since the reason that cause it haven’t been adress.
• edit: and AI is brining a lot of uncertainty into the job market. If you are about or graduate, I’d be worried to death about my future
• all whilst the rich got richer, threaten to take their wealth away, if you wish to tax them and the larger companies get record profit even as the economy slows down.

For sure most people are in the streets for the extra 2 years but there’s a lot more going on.

Man, I love talking about history. A town that I'm close by, there's signs everywhere that tell the story of how this was a boomtown during the Industrial Revolution. Due to the location on the river, it became a major producer of lumber from the sawmills. It gets even crazier, when they were fighting for worker rights, most of the politicians were sawmill owners.

> They faced many hazards like injury and death without compensation, as there were no workmen’s compensation or death benefits available.

> Several months previously the men who controlled the lumber trade had formed the Lumbermen’s Exchange, a cartel set up to control and monopolize lumber affairs with one voice. The Lumbermen’s Exchange answered this threat to their power by refusing to negotiate with the workmen but instead, started retaliating against them.

They eventually got a 10 hour day.

We owe so much for the few labor rights we do have today, that Republicans are constantly trying to repeal.

Enough people care to vote in corporatist and/or fascists into office because the people are constantly bombarded by corporatist propaganda.

People are not nearly as impoverished now as they were in the late 19th century when they were striking for an 8 hour day.

wasnt their alternative an ultra right wing/fascist Le Pen?

Those weren’t protests. They were indeed riots against your fellow countrymen, people who are in no way responsible for the violations of rights in question.

also the right to remain silent

Everyone jokes the our military budget is why we don’t have national health insurance, one of the real reason we don’t is if people didn’t worry about losing their health insurance they mind be more likely to protest in large numbers and for long periods.

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Jesus. Heist that second point scares the shit out of me

I’m late 20s, working full time but struggling a lot due to mental health issues The thought of 40 years of feeling this stressed to access the full pension in retirement is terrifying

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Oh absolutely. Part of the reason we're not is because so many Americans hold multiple jobs to support themselves and family. With no social safety nets and increasing atomization of society it's difficult to educate people about these sorts of things. Sad state of affairs all around.

sorry for the deleted comment - was replying to Molwar

Love talking history too! Thanks for the historical tidbit. Democrats aren't exactly pro labor either. All of that got tossed out when the country needed to ideologically 'unify' for the World War efforts.

But our current system actually spends more of a % of our GDP on healthcare than most euros do so it is not a matter of pure dollars. It comes down to the current system being inefficient in dollars per healthcare gained. We essentially have the worst of both worlds of it being mandatory but mostly private, thus allowing them to gauge prices. You also have the very unhealthy state of American citizens making healthcare prices more expensive

> Democrats aren't exactly pro labor either.

I did further reading and I learned that my state is really against unions.

Here's some other stuff:

>Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. The National Labor Union was founded on August 20, 1866, in Baltimore, Maryland. It was the first attempt to create a national labor group in the United States and one of their first actions was the first national call for Congress to mandate an 8-hour work day.

>In early 1866 William Harding, who was then president of the Coachmakers' International Union, met with William H. Sylvis, president of the Ironmoulders' International Union and Jonathan Fincher, head of the Machinists and Blacksmiths Union. At that meeting they called for a formal meeting to be held August 20-24, 1866, in Baltimore, Maryland. On the first day of that meeting the National Labor Union was born. Also, on that first day various committees were created to study different issues—one of which was focused on the 8-hour system.

>On the third day the committee on "eight-hours in all its respects" met and made their recommendation. In the Union’s final list of resolutions made on August 20 of 1866, was their resolution calling for an 8-hour work day, the first such national call. While this call went unheeded at the time, and the organization folded in 1873, this was only the beginning of the campaign for an 8-hour work day.

>Over the ensuing decades, this idea would wend its way through the country and by 1912 it made its way into the progressive campaign of Theodore Roosevelt. The slogan for the movement became "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will." In 1916 William C. Adamson introduced the Adamson Act. While this act was specifically aimed at railroad workers, it gave the 8-hour campaign a real boost when it was passed in September 1916. Railroads immediately protested, but in 1917 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in Wilson v. New (243 U.S. 332).

>The increasing power of unions along with state governments legislating working hour limits and the federal government’s expansion of the use and enforcement of the 8-hour work day, meant that the 8-hour work day become even more wide-spread. But it didn't end there. The passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act (sometimes known as the Wages and Hours bill) gave even more protections, setting the maximum workweek at 40 hours for other industries and provided that employees working beyond 40 hours a week would receive additional overtime bonus salaries.

Emphasis my own. I thought the cobbler's union was the first.

They voted for her to be there though.

It is too easy to say "not our fault, it was Macron or LePen!". No, it was Macron or LePen because people voted for Macron and Lepen.

Thanks for this. Yes - the norms we take for granted today were 'radical' yesterday!

The merchant class has brainwashed half the working class into taking up arms to protect their control though.

Full pension by 64. Otherwise you get it at 67 like in the US

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What would make you think they don't?

Apart from propaganda of course.

Those policies are already in place or they're part of the new retirement Reform? Because those laws are fucking insane, even worse than in the US. Which is hard to believe for a European country. There's so many reasons a person might not be able to work continuously with zero breaks for 40 years.

Can someone else confirm this is true? Do you have a source??

Tbf if they weren't upset about the Reform itself that probably wouldn't bother them. If the Reform was to lower the retirement age to 60 and he passed it without a vote I don't they'd be protesting.

>I am currently admiring the French. They kind of seem like one of the few modern nations where the citizenry actually give a shit about democracy.

Shout out to Israel and the hundreds of thousands protesting right now against their minority-elected fascist leader.

Sad thing is if Americans WERE protesting like this for worker's rights, aside from the militarized police the primary people fighting against them would the slobbering brainless Conservative masses fighting to be bent over and buggered by their rich overlords.

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it's kind of true but if you take a break and don't work for a year you don't lose your whole pension. You will have to take your retirement one year later. Still a pretty shitty reform though.

Says the guy pushing homophobic, racist shit, and backing Trump. Yeah, I think you are the one that should be taken with a grain of salt, bud.

France doesn't have the lowest retirement age-- countries like Nepal, India, and Indonesia have pension retirements in the 50s. The absolute highest that French pensions go is 900 euros a month. And I've often found that when people complain about lazy workers, it's usually just that a worker isn't acting like a desperate servant stressing over their next meal.

The problem is you're comparing French benefits to other nations (without even understanding the numbers), rather than comparing benefits to the actual need. French workers had these benefits because they fought and literally paid for them. American workers don't because too many of them take the side of corporate ownership and argue that it should be easier to fire people, workers shouldn't organize, benefits can always get worse etc.

All the more reason for people to protest. If you've got a good a good system then you need to prevent it from slipping backwards.

The right to be a slave and being hooked to social media for entertainment.

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Same thing, because nothing has changed yet. French people don't just lay down and take it up the ass because their almighty leaders said so. The US could learn something from these but they're too busy sucking on corporate boot

What are they going to do ? Vote Macron out of office? Maybe vote Le Pen in and revert the change of retirement from 64 to 69? Then kick all the immigrants out?

Is that true? The highest French pensions pay out is like 900 euro a month?

It’s more than that- raising the age of the pension (and the extraordinary measures taken to pass it) are just a symptom of a greater problem: the people in office at virtually all levels of French government take the state of the country and its people for granted.

The same things affecting most other developed countries are affecting France. It’s harder for young people to start a family, the quality of life for all people feels as if it is being eroded from all sides In piecemeal ways, and the political system is failing to address these fundamental difficulties- often preferring technical solutions that do nothing to address the long term issue- while politicians themselves increasingly become difficult to differentiate from the wealthy elite.

Most importantly, people are sick of the lack of accountability- you can be incompetent and destructive while in elected office and the worst thing that can befall you is that you will lose the election, no matter how many lives are ruined by your actions. Sound familiar?

Raising the age of the pension is emblematic of the sclerotic mindset of a political class that believes the nation can bear any amount of burdens and continue to exist and prosper. The vast majority of the political class takes the health of the country for granted, doing absolutely nothing to address the underlying demographic problems or to make necessary investments in the economy to remain relevant- especially if it would be inconvenient for the interests of the very wealthy by making them pay taxes.

France (and many other developed countries) need measures to simultaneously crack down on tax evasion in the short term, prioritize positive demographic stability of the country in the long term, and to dramatically increase economic productivity on an individual basis to bridge the gap between the two periods. If you talk to French politicians, they’re likely to be solely interested in making sure their government provided vehicles have a secured parking garage that is nearby their offices.

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Yeah Macron made sure of that and people fell for it, the dumb fucks. Actually promoting the far right to get into power is a trick that's been going on for decades. The issue now is that there really is no other alternative. France is fucked.

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The American working class is less militant because it’s much wealthier

Hope that helps!

Like I said - totally pessimistic about that happening the above being just one of the many reasons why. 😭

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Playing the devil's advocate here: the French only work 4 days/week, enjoy 4-6 weeks vacation/year, and with the huge immigration from Asia+Africa+South America pouring in, the government can't maintain the same benefits (including pensions) that the French enjoyed in the past.

Their pensions are guaranteed by the government, and they have a steady increasing rate, not like in the US where you can work a lifetime and lose your savings to bankrupt companies.

Besides, in France there are many social programs fpr seniors, such as paying a fraction of property tax after a certain age, and paying little to nothing on public transportation.

In France workers are entitled to far more vacation days than in the US (over one month each year), longer maternity/paternity leave, and they work 4 days a week. Also, their pensions are guaranteed by the government, at a generous annual increase rate.

It seems to me they protest a lot in France. Earlier this year there was a garbage collectors' strike, now this. And it's only March.

The current government signed large tax breaks for corporations, and other benefits for the wealthy and are now making the people pay for it with their life

I don't understand. Things have changed. People live longer and there is a lower percentage of young people in society. What is the other plan to account for that?

And in that time productivity has more than doubled but more than half the wealth from that has gone to the top 1%.

Your math isn't wrong but it is only relevant because we haven't been allow to invest out gains back into our society