I would like more context, because I just believe that would make it funnier.
Okay, you asked for it:
It was in 2013 if my memory is still well. From 2002 to 2012, France have been governed by right-wing governments. Those government had a brillant strategy to deal with the never ending stream of debt of the SNCF (the national railroad):
Divide it in three entity, one possess the rail, the other the train and the last, which kept the name SNCF, borrow the train and pay for the use of the rail the two other society. (the three society will still remain public)
Needless to stay, the union fought those reform, and several strikes followed. In 2012, a left-wing president is elected and in 2013 his government introduce a reform to tweak the structure of the SNCF, thus reversing the action taken by the right-wing government.
Here two facts are to be considered :
1) This left-wing government did economic reform that the right would have never dare to introduce by fear of a terrible backlash.
2) The unions have a tradition of strike whenever the government try to touch the SNCF.
Knowing that the unions would go on strike, the government put something that the union would never accept in the law, so the unions did their strike, the government negotiate with the unions leaders, take back the part of the project that the unions didn't accept. The unions leaders came back to the unions members and ask for the strike to end. But the members voted to resume the strike. As there is a strong tradition of following strikes in the SNCF, the strike went on and on during three more weeks pushed by extremist and angry unionist.
The union leaders and the government was in disarray, the only message they got from the members who voted to resume the strike was : "We are not happy, austerity and Europe is bad"
When you asked a SNCF's employee why there was a strike, he always answered : "I do not know"
The worst thing is: The law that started all simply reversed change that the unions opposed...
PS : Actually there is also an internal struggle between competing union. The old Marxist CGT and the renewed Sud Rail which is extremist, populist (for a union !) and anti-European. Sud Rail members decided to resume the strike and the CGT didn't wanted to appear weak...
