Picket Line

The last few weeks in France, teachers have been on an on-and-off strike. Max’s school was closed one day a few weeks ago so that the teachers and their assistants could strike, and my students have come up to me once a week lately to ask if we’re having class or if I’m on strike. It must be the American in me, but I just don’t get the strike thing.

It seems like a huge waste of energy and time. Why can’t people work out their differences without having to take days off of work and making life difficult for everyone else? It’s just a little too foreign of a concept for my Protestant work-ethic upbringing. But, as with the deadly breeze, avoiding cold drinks if you have a stomach flu, and other French beliefs that seem strange to me, I try to step back and think, “When in Rome”. Not that I always "do as the Romans", but I do attempt to consider that there must be some sort of background or history that I don’t fully grasp that has gone into the formation of these cultural phenomena. Meaning…I try not to judge.

But since I’ve become a pawn in the advanced-level chess game that is the French Educational System, I’m starting to understand teachers' frustrations. I say “pawn” since I’m at the very bottom end of the pecking order. I’m a vacataire. That means I'm free-lance. I’m not salaried. I don’t get all of the benefits that a “real” professor does: sick days, pension, and monthly paychecks. That’s right – I don’t get paid monthly. I get paid twice a year, months after the work has been done. Which is just downright ridiculous.

My friend, Mags, who got me this job, had to borrow money from her parents the first semester that she taught, just to get herself and her kids by until the university paid her. Similarly, Laurent and I have been scraping by on his income until the end of the semester, when I was supposed to be paid. I began teaching classes in September, and the semester ended in December. So I figured I would be paid a month later, at the end of January, like I was in Blois. When no paycheck arrived, I went to the admin offices to ask what was up.

“Well, since you didn’t make a special request asking to be paid early, you won’t be paid until the end of February,” the accountant said with a maddening shrug. “Early? I started working in September…you call being paid five months later early?” “That’s just how it is with vacataires,” she huffed, adding that I would need to put in a special request if I wanted to be paid for the second semester before September. The second semester ends in May.

Apparently the reason that all of the vacataire payments can’t be made promptly at the end of the semester (except in case of special requests stating why exactly you need to be paid before everyone else) is because there is only one person for the entire region’s university system who writes the checks. And that person is a vacataire. And she’s only allowed to write with her toes. On Tuesdays. After drinking three bottles of wine. Don’t ask questions, that’s just the way things are done. (OK, that last part isn’t true. But the one “temp” person writing checks is.)

The pay situation is maddening enough, without taking into consideration all of the free work we are expected to do. The second week of January, I drove an hour into Tours to spend the next five hours giving exams, then drove the hour home and spent eight hours grading 250 exam papers. “I hope you’re getting paid for this,” Laurent said. “Of course I am!” I retorted indignantly. And then I found out that I wasn’t.

The forty euros per hour, gross, sounded good in the beginning. Until you throw in all of the “free” exam hours, the hour preparation for every hour spent in class, the grading of mid-term exams, the teacher’s meetings, and training sessions for the resource library. The hourly fee is only paid for hours that you stand up teaching in front of a class, not for any of the rest of it. Which means that I might as well work as a tour guide again for thirteen euros per hour. At least, then, I could make tips.

This Tuesday I drove in for my 8:00a.m. class, leaving home at 6:30a.m. in order to get there and set up before class started. By the time I organized all of my photocopies and arrived in the classroom, students were leaving with cell-phones held to their ears, telling their fellow students that we weren’t having classes. They pointed to a sign on the door that said that English classes for Tuesday were cancelled because of the strike. 

The little switch in my brain flipped up from “normal” to “crazed” within a second, and cursing, I got back in my car and drove the hour home. I was almost through my front door when my cell phone rang. “It’s Debbie,” said a fellow teacher who I had left a message with. “That sign was just for Danielle’s classes. She and Claude are striking today, since they’re salaried staff.” “It said, ‘English classes’, not ‘Danielle’s English classes’, I moaned.” “Yea, well…” Debbie trailed off. I didn't go back. And Danielle phoned to apologize about her "vague" sign. But that didn't erase two hours of driving and the fact that I had woken up at 5:30a.m. for nothing.

It’s all pretty maddening. Almost enough to make you want to do something about it. Like, I don’t know…go on strike.