[saiya-jin]

Solidarity? You must live far from actual France and have some romantic young rosy view on events far away. Almost everybody who isn't protesting is pissed off at folks protesting, since they block you from doing basic things in life like going to work, shopping groceries, driving anywhere or flying, taking train, going to gas station, going to hospital (I kid you not, you can be unlucky and literally die to negligence when health care sector goes on strike and nobody would bat an eye too much, and french public health care sector is not in good state currently). Cca half of my colleagues commute daily to work from France, so I have some group of quite opinionated citizens that express their honest opinions loudly outside of French borders.

There are often good causes behind strikes. What they actually do though every single time, is take rest of civilian population as hostages, make their life as miserable as possible for as long as possible, to create pressure on politicians.

See a little flaw in the logic above? You consistently end up in the crowd of hostages that take various pressures from side to side, often in matters unrelated to yours (say massive subsidies to diary farmers should be even more massive, nobody got time to improve efficiency or processes so market gets distorted more and more and local farmers are brutally incompetitive on their own), and you and your family suffers.

US population would not handle such massive things nicely I believe, not with so many guns and gun/freedom culture in general population.

[omnimus]

Yeah you shouldnt strike because you could disturb those who like how the system works!! (because it works for them)

Solidarity doesnt mean being nice to others. Its awarnes of shared interests and acepting/enduring some pains for others. This includes understanding that you might not be striking today but you might in future.

[saiya-jin]

No, you should be smart. Instead of taking whole country and its population (and everybody else anyhow connected to it) hostage, strike politicians you want to affect where its most inconvenient and 'hurtful' for them, strike the state that you want the change from.

Don't go through making life miserable all the time for 65 millions of folks who didn't cause your woes in any way. I understand its far easier and 'cheaper' to target literally everybody out there, but that's lazy and makes tons of enemies of causes that you should be gathering support for.

[omnimus]

Again solidarity… If the strikers were listened to by the politicians they need to target then there wouldnt be a strike in a first place. People dont strike for fun. They try a lot of things before striking. Including communication with HR, bosses, politicians. All of it is easier than orginising a strike.

Instead you assume they didnt try other ways. They are “not smart”, they take others “as hostage” and their methods are “lazy”.

If they did strike in convinient ways nobody would care/listen. Making people upset exactly the point. You wouldnt be upset about it on US tech forum most likely you wouldnt hear about nor care about some lazy farmers.

[saiya-jin]

You mean enforced solidarity without any chance to vote out of it, not very democratic if you ask me. More like gentle modern terrorism, we strike you where it annoys you the most to manipulate you to change your opinions en masse as we need.

Not actually what the word solidarity originally means.

Also, more broadly to the topic a lot of french strikes by state sector were purely money driven, asking each year for substantial raises on top of already-agreed rises even when economy wasn't performing well, asking for 12+ salaries when leaving, of course 10+ weeks of paid vacations, ridiculously high pensions at early age and similar stuff. I don't mean folks like police or firefighters but lifelong paper pushers. That wouldn't fare well in US, would it. As I said, on the ground in France most folks don't approve most of the strikes, but they don't have any choice or effective voice unlike very vocal minority who often has strikes as a (part time) job.

One example I saw unfolding closely even if not living there - during 'gillet jaune' there was a long period in neighboring region where cars would get sometimes attacked by throwing rocks on random roundabouts and places if not showing yellow vest for support behind windscreen or elsewhere visible. This included foreign cars in France. Instead of maybe half of cars driving around with it initially, eventually everybody got scared into driving/parking with it 100% of the time. This lasted few months. This was most publicly supported strike I recall from past few years. Like most of them it eventually leads to another round of bitter political arguments since these are always also political moves.

[omnimus]

You dont have to have solidarity towards them. You obviously dont have and thats fine.

This is society everyone affects everyone. Same way you are inconvenienced by some workers striking. The workers are exploited by things that are out of there hands. So many people would like to quit capitalism but its impossible it will be enforced on everyone.

Be glad that it now works in your favor and you dont have to be one striking.

[johnnyanmac]

>strike the state that you want the change from.

In this case that "state" seems to be Ubisoft. I don't know who's being hostage outside of assassin creed players having a delayed release. But that sounds like a trivial sacrifice compared to a political strike.

[southerntofu]

You must watch a lot of french propaganda to have some romantic young rosy view on "hostage taking". Except for those who profit from the system's abuses (such as your colleagues) most people very much support the strikes. It's only the TV stations claiming otherwise, but look at the actual polls for example against the pension reform last year...

Can you name a single person that died due to health care strikes? No, because even when on strike health care workers perform their duties. They simply wear a badge or demonstrate outside of job hours. You're just spitting outright lies. However, we can name the many people (the number keeps rising every year) dying from job "accidents", which is one of the reasons unions and strikes exist.

Solidarity is precisely supporting others in their struggles. And yes, there is a lot of that. If you actually went on a strike's picket line, you would see a lot of different people from different jobs, including unemployed or retired people. Some people bring coffee or food, others materials to build barricades or wood to burn to keep warm in winter... Not everyone is as selfish as your colleagues who only care about missing a train and not why people are actually on strike.

All power to the Ubisoft workers, and to all other workers on strike.