Empty railway platforms, deserted bus stops, paralysed roads: France ground to a halt on October 18th, as transport, electricity and gas unions led a one-day strike against a planned reform of the "special regimes" for public-sector pensions. For the first time since 1995, all eight of the main railway unions joined the strike, as did some teachers and many others. Perhaps the only really happy commuters in Paris were those who had managed to grab early one of the capital's 10,600 popular Velib' rent-a-bikes.rnThere are two ways to interpret this week's show of union force. One is that it is the first sign of a return to 1995, when four weeks of strikes against a similar pension reform forced the government of the day to abandon its plans altogether. Union leaders are to meet early next week to decide whether to call a follow-up strike. For Bernard Thibault, leader of the communist-backed Confederation Generale du Travail, the biggest rail union, who cut his teeth as a railway-union boss in 1995, this is his chance to flex his muscles at President Nicolas Sarkozy, not only over the pension regime but ahead of a raft of other reforms this autumn.
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