Why don't they just unionize the kindergarten kids too?

Make good use of that extra 58 seconds a day they plan on making railway employees work Will they make people stand in line for another 58 seconds every morning?

«May 16 (Bloomberg) -- French transport and school services were disrupted by protests against the scrapping of the 119-year- old Whit Monday public holiday, adding to the government's unpopularity just weeks before a vote on Europe's constitution.

France's seven main unions asked transport workers and teachers to strike today, and businesses, including BNP Paribas SA's 2,200 bank branches, remained closed. Prime Minister Jean- Pierre Raffarin abolished the holiday to raise 2 billion euros ($2.5 billion) in taxes from the extra working day for the aged and the disabled, after 15,000 people died in 2003's heat wave.»

They wont even work one day for the fate of the aged, and demand Whit Monday in a nation where barely 5% of the population attends religious services, and the unions still spit in the face of a noble goal. Not enough irony yet?

«BNP Paribas, France's second-largest bank, closed all its French retail banking arm's branch offices, 70 percent of which are typically closed on Mondays.»

«Among [the ad hoc pro-strike groupss] arguments is a line from a 1981 encyclical on work by Pope John Paul II in which he said, "The justice of an economic system must be evaluated according to the way human labor is fairly compensated."»

What about the six free WEEKS where productivity is NIL? Or the reverse when it comes to any number of other entitlements? This is exactly why pay in the US is enumerated by hours, even for salaried employees.

«The SNCF, which faced strike threats by unions, has decided its workers will from now on work [an additional] one minute 52 seconds longer each [other] day to make up for the lost labor.»

Well, they might spend that minute reading ¡No Pasaràn! and chowing down a muffin, but who knows.

And while theyre at it, why dont they install ticket vending machines in the metro? Even the East Germans managed that bit of common sense.