Courtesy of Mish.
Unfair Competition
The national pastime in France is striking against "unfair competition". To French socialists, the term "unfair competition" means any competition.
On Tuesday French unions decided once again to do something about the unfairness: make everyone miserable as best they can.
Flights Cancelled
Bloomberg reports Taxi Drivers Take to the Streets in 24-Hour French Strikes.
France endured mass strikes on Tuesday as taxi drivers, air traffic controllers, civil servants and teachers demanded more purchasing power, job creation and an end to disruptive competition to traditional industries.
Hundreds of taxi drivers took to the streets of Paris, burning car tyres and blocking routes to principal airports in a demonstration that spread disruption across the capital.
A protest by air traffic controllers prompted France’s Civil Aviation Authority to ask airlines to cancel 20 per cent of their flights in France.
The strikes stand to create further problems for President François Hollande and his socialist government as he battles with low economic growth and record unemployment. Mr Hollande has promised not to run for re-election in 2017 if he does not manage to reverse the upward trend in joblessness.
On Tuesday, hundreds of taxi drivers blocked the road at Paris’s Porte Maillot, one of the capital’s principal entry points. By early morning, they had already succeeded in blocking one direction of the eight-lane highway. Television images showed the strikers lighting fireworks and dragging metal barriers in front of commuter cars desperate to pass.
Waving flags and burning tyres, the taxi drivers were protesting about the rise of disruptive competition such as Uber, the US ride-sharing application, and Heetch, a French ride-sharing app that has become popular among young people.
Among other things, they argue that minicab drivers working with services such as Uber do not have to pay the elevated prices for a regular licence — which have reached as high as €240,000 — and therefore compete under different conditions….
Picture via Pixabay.
