Word: pensioners
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Parisians were pounding the pavement with the same sympathetic mood. "As usual, the ordinary worker being taken hostage by a minority of people who've decided they come first," complains an accountant who would only give her first name, Chantal. "I didn't strike when they reformed my pension plan," she said, referring to private sector pension schemes was passed...
...most significant of the two developments came as unions representing French public service workers fulfilled threats to bring transportation across the nation to a crawl on Thursday, with strikes protesting proposed tightening of pension schemes. The action forced millions of French commuters to drive, cycle, walk, or roller-blade to work as public transport systems in nearly 30 French cities were hit by strikes of varying severity. Such self-reliance wasn't an option for users of inter-city and cross-country train service: state rail company SNCF canceled a whopping 95% of scheduled traffic, and remains the most vulnerable...
...night and running through Thursday will cause cancellation of nearly 90% of all scheduled train service across France, and is expected to bring public transport in almost 30 major cities - including Paris - to a standstill. The movement will also be backed by other public employees involved in a contested pension reform: limited disruption is expected in schools due to striking teachers, for example, while the Paris Opera and Comédie Français have already canceled their programs for Thursday with virtually all their public sector staff set to walk out. At issue: the government's plan to require...
...west shores accounted for more than four-fifths of the two firms' production. That bounty has made this nation of just 4.6 million people rich. Government taxes on the country's oil business - Norway is the world's fifth largest exporter by volume - have helped bloat Norway's national pension fund to around $350 billion. But those good times couldn't last forever. With fields beginning to dry up, oil production has slid to 2.6 million bbl a day this year from 3.5 million six years ago, says John Olaisen, Oslo-based energy analyst at Carnegie, a Nordic investment bank...
...Lack of confidence may also mean lack of patience with new policies Sarkozy is preparing - starting with his plans to align so-called "special regimes" requiring civil servants to work fewer years to qualify for pensions closer to longer private sector schemes. To do so, Sarkozy has begun consultations with unions and their state-owned employers, and pledged to adapt the reform to the specifics of certain jobs, companies, and sectors before passing it into law and applying it - probably next year. But as they did with the month-long strikes that crippled the nation in 1995 (and eventually...