Risking the rage of the aged

摘要

Sisyphus had it easy, compared with French pension reformers. The mythical Greek was damned eternally to roll a boulder up a hill and watch it roll back down again. But he never had to persuade Gallic workers to retire later. In 1995 Jacques Chirac's government shelved his attempt to reform the system after weeks of protests and strikes brought Paris to a standstill. He tweaked it in 2003 but faced protests of 1m workers and more. Nicolas Sarkozy made a bit more progress in 2010, but still not nearly enough.