Why detached Macron thinks he’s winning – POLITICO
▻https://www.politico.eu/article/why-detached-macron-thinks-hes-winning
... the country is far from being paralyzed as it was in 1995 and 1968. Even the railways have not been completely halted as they were in 1986.
Parisians have had limited Metro and bus services and no Christmas opera or ballet performances, but outside Paris, other than for rail travelers, the strikes have been scarcely felt.
While just over 50 percent of French people oppose the pension reform and up to a million have joined nationwide protest marches, the strikes themselves are tiny.
By my reckoning, 0.58 percent of French public sector workers are en grève and 0.11 percent of the entire French workforce. Almost no one in the private sector has ceased work.
The vast majority of strikers — 30,000 out of roughly 35,000 — are on the railways and the Paris Metro. Even on the state railways the proportion of strikers has fallen to 7.7 percent of staff (compared to over 12 percent at the start). Something similar is happening on the Paris Metro and buses.
