Word: rails
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wage increases higher than the government's 3% ceiling. Police have had to clear picketers off railroad tracks at scores of stations, and labor unrest has spread to Communist-led work stoppages on Paris subways, in the electric-power service and on the docks. At week's end the rail strike finally seemed to be losing steam, but the unrest could be prolonged in other areas...
Railroad stations in cities as staid and ordered as Grenoble and Lyons look like those in Naples. Among the throngs of stranded passengers, French families accustomed to better things share sausages and bread, using newspapers as picnic tablecloths. With rail traffic cut to 40% of normal, queues form behind charter-bus drivers showing their destinations on cardboard signs and shouting out the departure times. In Lyons's Part Dieu station, an illuminated advertising billboard shows a streaking orange superspeed train and carries the slogan that with the national French railway EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE! Some irate, but erudite passenger has scrawled...
...other $22 billion would come in part from gimmicks that the White House used to call revenue enhancements. One proposed strategy is the sale of Government-owned assets to private investors. Among items that could make it to the auction block are the Amtrak rail system and several regional power- marketing administrations, which sell electricity to local utilities. Reagan is putting forward a plan in which the Government would sell $8 billion worth of the loans it has made to students, small businesses and other debtors. Private investment companies would buy the loans and then collect the interest and principal...
France's worst outbreak of public strikes since the 1960s grew increasingly turbulent last week. Sparked by walkouts of rail and maritime workers last month, the stoppages cut train service by up to 80%, leaving thousands of travelers stranded, and virtually halted activity in many of the country's major ports. Strikers blocked rail lines and harassed workers who remained on the job. In Paris, police were called out to clear the tracks for the few trains that still...
...week's end maritime workers and the government reached a provisional accord containing concessions for the strikers. The rail strike continued unabated, however, and France's largest labor group, the Confederation Generale du Travail, called for stoppages in public utilities and Paris bus and Metro service to support demands for higher wages and work-rule changes. The deepening confrontation came just weeks after Premier Jacques Chirac bowed to student protesters in December by withdrawing plans to reform France's universities...