Word: french
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...year-old former student and victim of rape wept while recounting what happened to her during a Lifesteps seminar. Jane, who asked not to be identified by her real name, left the school in March. "They had me dress up as a French maid," she said, describing an outfit that included fishnet stockings and a short skirt. "I had to sit on guys' laps and give them lap dances," while sexually suggestive songs, like "Milkshake" by Kelis, played at high volume...
...French people and their political culture love history and all commemoration of it - to the extent that France often looks to its past as much as it does to its future in responding to its present," says Guy Groux, a specialist in French social and labor conflict for the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris. "Because of that, we're in a political and ideological disconnect, with our egalitarian ideals rooted in past hostility to capitalism and free markets even as our society and economy have become utterly dependent on them...
...Ironically, the weakness of French unions also explains their explosiveness. Less than 8% of French workers belong to a union - a figured dwarfed by averages elsewhere in Europe and even by America's relatively low 14% level. Worse still, small French unions are bitterly divided among themselves and tend to be dislocated from sector to sector. The result, Groux says, is French management often ignores them while preparing for layoffs and remains high-handed once negotiating begins. All that, he says, increases the allure and utility of insurrectional action - and pushes the limits of dramatic protest over time...
...French unions must often stage radical action as a prerequisite for obtaining good faith negotiations that big unions in the U.K. and Germany are granted out of hand, out of management's respect of their power," Groux says. "Meanwhile, unions and protestors turning to radical action here wind up competing with each other for the media coverage that creates - since big press is what creates pressure on bosses and the government to concede. The result is, there's constant obligation to up the ante to ensure protests don't wind up ignored...
...Usually that works. Most French bossnappings have resulted in negotiations to reduce layoffs or increase severance payouts - or both. And this week's blockading fishermen got a promise of $66 million in government loans to ride out the rough economic seas. What they didn't get was movement on lowering the E.U. fishing quotas that provoked their ire in the first place. Because of that, it's a good bet they'll soon be seen mounting their aquatic barricades again...