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Comment by norswap | Hacker News Reader

In Belgium where I live, 10% of prison wardens and 50% of the public transportation sector go on strike at least thrice every year. Here at least it's not a big deal. Sad country, I know.

I agree it's probably more significant in China, where they are not used to this kind of behaviour.

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That is very bad. I was always curious how life is in Europe (being the first world) but didn't think that's how the state of affairs would be.

Is it because of unions?

It's not "Europe", it's parts of it. France is particularly bad I hear, supposedly paralysed by unions. In the UK things are much better because unions lost a lot of their power in the 80s under Thatcher.

Unions are not universally bad. As with all things it's a matter of dosage. Germany has pretty strong unions, too...

FWIW, France has a lower proportion of unionized workforce than the US, and a lot lower than the UK in the public sector. It's more about cultural differences than any single thing like unions.

Oh, I didn't know that. I've just heard bad things about it.

Although I might be confusing this with the government business laws in France, which are also a bit messy. There's a reason lots of French companies have exactly 49 employees.

I found it amusing that, when in college, the only people who objected to the on-campus bar's pool table usage scheme - "winner stays, loser pays" - in the whole four years I was there, were French :)

It's also because of unions that far few people are losing their life at the workplace. Seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.

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