Paris

Unions vs. Macron: Hundreds of thousands of French publicsector workers went on strike this week to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to cut jobs and tighten pay conditions. As civil servants, teachers, transport workers, nurses, and air traffic controllers marched in cities across the country, schools were closed, train services disrupted, and hundreds of flights canceled—stranding 100,000 passengers. Macron, who won the presidency on a pledge to streamline France’s bloated bureaucracy, wants to freeze public-sector pay and cut 120,000 state workers over the next five years. But his plan to water down a wealth tax has seen him labeled “president of the rich” by the Left, and he has further angered unions by calling opponents of his reforms “slackers.”