Europe Has No Choice: Work Longer

The season of strikes has begun in Europe. Having enjoyed their summer holidays, one and a half million – perhaps as many as two million - French workers took to the streets this week to protest against a relatively modest austerity plan. The massive turnout surprised even the trade unions, who were secretly reconciling themselves to some belt-tightening.

The protest is to be repeated on September 23, while similar mass actions and strikes are planned around Europe – in Spain, Britain, the Czech Republic – to resist government budget-cutting imposed as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. What is at stake here is not just pay rises for the workers, but the survival of the European-style super-welfare state, where people work less and enjoy ever more state-funded leisure.