I put this video up at youtube, but the Flashification of it made it suck royally—from a technical perspective. As a piece of agitprop, it sucks as well, because I should have had more footage of the Paris Metro working, which is exactly what it did during the strike, which was more of what we in the Anglosphere would call a job action than a strike. I mean, reliable displays of when the next train is going to arrive? The New York City subway should work so well.

A common canard given us in the US is that if you don't "incentivize" workers by holding the threat of job loss (and attendent benefits) over their heads at all times, they won't do a good job. I think this is empirical evidence to the contrary. From what I wrote at the youtube page:

Level of service on the 14 and 12 lines, Wednesday, November 14. It's not a random sample of overall service and isn't meant to be. My 0,02EU is that the rail workers are doing a good job and Sarkozy should have a hot steaming cup of STFU and stick his "reforms" where the sun doesn't shine. Alas, I think the French will have to go down the same rotten road that Ronald Reagan took the USA before realizing how important giving your infrastructure workers a good deal is. Mes amis, if you want to know what the SNCF will be like in twenty years if Sarkozy gets his way, look at Amtrak, and be afraid, be very afraid.

Music:

The overbearing orchestral work is "Pacific 231" by Arthur Honegger. It was a piece of music about a train by a French (OK, Belgian) composer. I thought it would work, but it didn't.

The closing piano music is the reprise of the theme from Frederic Rzewski's 36 Variations on "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" with Rzewski himself at the piano. If you haven't heard the whole thing, go listen to it.