At the time of writing, around 100,000 strikers have been paralysing the French railway system for a whole week.
Since the strike began, on Tuesday June 10th, and despite a vicious and slanderous campaign orchestrated by the government through the media, it has been gathering momentum every day. So much so, that the railway bosses are finding it virtually impossible to conceal the extent of the strike, or even to use middle management to run a skeleton service, as they usually do.
What makes this strike all the more significant is that it is a strike against the attacks of a government led by the Socialist Party - which came back to power in 2012, thanks largely to the votes of working people and the support of the unions - much as the Labour Party did here, in 1997.
But just like the Labour party, once in office, the Socialist party has bent over backwards to meet the wishes of big business. So it's no surprise that French railway workers have had enough. Why should they pay for the bosses' greed? They've chosen to fight back.
"Hands off our conditions"!
The demands of French strikers will sound familiar to many of us here. The government says the (still!) state-owned railways (SNCF) must become more "efficient". Its aim, however, is not to improve the service for passengers, but to make SNCF more "competitive" - that is, more profitable for future shareholders, as part of its privatisation plans. And it wants to make workers foot the bill for this.
So, under the cover of an apparently benign "restructuring" exercise, the government has launched a frontal attack on workers' wages, jobs and conditions.
In particular, it wants to downgrade SNCF workers' conditions to the same low level as those in the handful of "private" railway companies which have been allowed to operate since 2006. But, in fact, this is a scandalous sleight of hand, especially as most of these "private" companies are in fact partly or fully owned by SNCF. If anything, conditions in these companies should be upgraded urgently to those in SNCF, not the reverse!
For SNCF workers, the result of this downgrade would be longer working hours, a 15% cut in the number of annual rest days, more flexibility, with the possibility of changing workers' rosters at the last minute, a wage freeze and massive job cuts.
This would definitely mean billions of pounds more in dividends for SNCF's future shareholders. But why should railway workers pay with their jobs, wages and conditions to line fatcats' pockets? The SNCF workers have decided that they won't. And they are showing their determination to fight off this new round of attacks.
The weapons we need
In this strike, all sections of SNCF workers are involved together, regardless of skill or grade - drivers, cleaners, ticket inspectors, office workers, travel centre, line maintenance, security, workshop repairs, etc... Not one section is left out. This is one of the strike's main strengths.
Another of its strengths is that every day, in each depot and station, all strikers join in mass meetings to vote on the continuation of the strike and to organise the day's tasks - street demonstrations, visits to other workers, leafleting of passengers, etc... This democratic operation of the strike is a powerful bond between workers. It creates a strong sense of fraternal solidarity and common purpose between workers who do not normally work together - and guarantees the solidity of the strike.
Instead of the "anger" that the media tries to whip up among the public by accusing the strikers of taking them "hostage", people's response to the strike is usually sympathetic, despite the difficulties created by the lack of transport.
There is some logic in this. The majority of the public is made of workers who are facing similar attacks from their own employers. They all know that, ultimately, the only language the bosses understand is the language used by the strikers - industrial action. And even if they aren't taking action themselves, for the time being, they know that they will have to, at some point in the future, to stop their bosses' attacks.
Indeed, there is no way around it. There has to be a fight back against the attacks of the capitalist class, be it in France or here in Britain. For far too long already the bosses have been getting away with murder, by making the working class foot the bill for the crisis - with our jobs, wages and conditions.
And, yes, like our sisters and brothers in the French railways, we could also say: enough is enough - and use our collective strength to start regaining the ground we've lost.