Oct. 18, 2022
French trade unions have begun a nationwide strike to demand higher
salaries amid the highest inflation in decades, one of the biggest
challenges to President Emmanuel Macron since his reelection in May.
Tuesday’s strike, which primarily affects public sectors such as schools
and transportation, is an extension of the weeks-long industrial action
that has disrupted France’s major refineries and put petrol stations’
supply in disarray.
The long-anticipated “hot autumn” begins as the European economy teeters on the edge of a largely self-inflicted stagflationary depression.
Last Friday (October 7), the 82-year old French writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature, for what the panel described as an “uncompromising” 50-year body of work exploring “a life marked by great disparities regarding gender, language and class”. A feminist and politically committed writer, Ernaux is the first French woman to win the award.
Some 200 environmental and land defense activists were killed around the world in 2021, including some 54 in Mexico, which assumed the position of the deadliest country in the annual report by nongovernmental organization Global Witness.
