Länk - Insikter om hur Frankrike fungerar - och varför

The roots of this French attitude reach back to the Enlightenment, when the country developed a republican model based on a social contract that stressed the collective will, while republican models in Britain and later the United States stressed the primacy of economics and individualism - what the French still, with a shudder, call liberalism. "French society remains attached to the idea of the collective," said Jean-Claude Mailly, national secretary of the Workers' Force labor union. "It's a less individualistic society. A whole series of things are managed collectively."

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Similarly, the right to strike is written into the French Constitution. Striking workers in France risk no more than a few days' pay. Nationwide strikes are meant to put pressure on the government more often than employers, and polls consistently show support for striking workers.