The French are revolting

Again. Lots of them.

Strikers shut down French trains and buses, disrupted electricity production at nuclear plants and barricaded universities Wednesday, giving President Nicolas Sarkozy the toughest challenge yet to his ambitious plans for restructuring the country’s huge social welfare programs.

This is a French thing. They admit this. They virtually all take part.

Technicians at the Paris Opera House and the Comédie Francaise and employees at electric and gas companies also walked off their jobs. Student strikes closed about one-third of the nation’s universities.

In the next several days, civil servants, teachers, postal and telecommunications workers, bank employees and judicial magistrates are scheduled to pile on, to press their own grievances over Sarkozy’s plans or to demand pay raises and better working conditions.

See, Sarkozy won election last year because of these reforms. The French knew they needed them. Now they don’t want them….not yet, anyway.

Sarkozy was elected in part on promises that he would streamline France’s turgid bureaucracy and restructure workplaces to make the country more competitive in the global marketplace. Workers from most of the sectors he is attempting to change are piggybacking on the transit strikes to forestall those changes.

Government employees are trying to retain special pensions, students are resisting proposals to give universities more control over finances and admissions, and magistrates are opposing attempts to consolidate courthouses.

But it’s backfiring. The common folk are feeling the hardship, and they know who’s causing it.

In the face of the second round of public-sector strikes in a month, Sarkozy’s cabinet ministers warned that the disruptions could last for days. “Fasten your seat belts,” advised Prime Minister Francois Fillon. “Millions of French people will be deprived of their fundamental freedom — the freedom of movement and even perhaps to work.”

Newspaper and television opinion polls released Wednesday show dwindling French public support for unions that for decades have shut down services to thwart government efforts to reduce pensions or shrink government institutions.

The people are sick and tired of politics and fighting, everywhere. They are looking for leadership.