Meanwhile, back on the ground, in a place that may soon officially become “foreign parts”

– and before you ask, no, it isn’t foreign parts as far as I’m concerned –

meanwhile, I say, life and struggles go on against all the odds. According to today’s Libération, some 200 emergency hospital staff met at the weekend in 33 towns in France. It was a strike movement that has affected 65 of these services across France. At the weekend they decided on a day of action in Paris on 6 June. They have a platform of demands, and they are familiar ones:

• stop the closure of hospital beds;
• raise pay levels;
• increase staffing levels

The national strike committee comprises this group, representatives from various regions of France, plus a united front of trade unions comprising the CGT, Force Ouvrière and the SUD (I don’t know what the last one is). There have been a number of strikes in different places. Dr Francis Braun, President of the Emergency Services of France, has called for a half-hour stoppage today across France. “We have reached the end,” he said. “I have never known anything like this before. The services are at breaking point, saturation point, the point of rupture. Rarely have I seen such stoppages of work.”

This is where we will have to head too, in our own austerity-driven crisis. We need a similar movement of resistance, in solidarity with French and other EU workers. Such solidarity will be more difficult if we leave the EU. But it will have to be done. Or we’re buggered.

Les urgences, entre surchauffe et abattement
https://www.liberation.fr/france/2019/05/27/les-urgences-entre-surchauffe-et-abattement_1729921