The big strike Tuesday

Le Monde has a nice item on the so-called "special regimes" that are at the heart of the strike that has disrupted transportation in France over the last week.

Interestingly, President Nicolas Sarkozy is fighting to overturn not some recent handouts of the modern welfare state, but institutions that go back hundreds of years, in some cases. The "régimes spéciaux" were created to compensate workers in dangerous or especially difficult jobs, or perhaps, as in the case of the theatre workers, jobs with endless and inconvenient hours. Some jobs, I would argue, do indeed merit special retirement. Imagine being a fishermen, for example, in the sailboat era, going out into the English channel or the Atlantic to brave January seas. In the United States, one can retire after 20 years of service in the military, with half pay and full PX and commissary privileges, among other things.

The special retirement regime for l'Opéra national de Paris was created in 1698 by Louis XIV; that of the merchant marine and fishermen was created in 1709. The Banque de France (what's so hard about banking?) got its special regime in 1806, the Comédie-Française got its in 1812, civil servants got theirs in 1853, railway workers got theirs in 1855, and miners -- surely the most deserving of all, got theirs in 1894.

When the modern system of sécurité sociale was created in 1945, the beneficiaries of the regimes were allowed to keep  some of their advantages, and a law was passed that year maintaining the status of the regimes for certain professions.  Now, with the population aging rapidly, the piper must be paid. Le Monde says the early retirements already require the government to write a 5 billion euro check every year, and that will only grow.

There's nothing fair about giving a central bank employee or a civil servant the same dangerous work retirement benefits that a coal miner gets, but in the politics of entitlement, fairness rarely plays a part...