In recent weeks, high-school pupils, teachers, university researchers, railwaymen and car workers have taken to the streets.
Others owe their political debts to building firms, farmers, postal workers and railwaymen.
The railwaymen were staging what might be called a pre-emptive strike a protest at the reorganisation of the SNCF, which faces competition for freight early next year, in case it leads to a sell-off.
By the time the two businesses were split half a century later, there had been gunfights with outlaws and Indians, run-ins with railwaymen and the United States Post Office, not to mention frequent embezzlement and occasional hangings.
Mr Sarkozy put an end to special pension rules, which had allowed some railwaymen to retire at 55, but at a cost of agreeing to more generous rules governing beneficiaries' final pensions.
The report described how it carried out the Vichy government's orders with no protest or resistance except for isolated acts by individual railwaymen, and took payment for the shipments.
He has dealt with, among others, striking lorry-drivers, airline pilots, doctors, schoolteachers, railwaymen.
It will be debated in parliament on June 17th.At a time of high unemployment and economic stagnation, there is little sympathy for those in protected public-sector jobs, least of all railwaymen.
This is supposed to secure the financing of pensions until 2020.The reform does not, however, even touch certain public-sector workers, such as railwaymen and employees of the electricity and gas utilities, who are covered by special schemes.
An hour later, next to the border with the Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb bit of Bosnia, Croatian police and customs officers repeat their checks, and Croatian railwaymen uncouple their locomotive and one from the RS is shunted up to replace it.
The past months have brought strikes, riots and protests by students, railwaymen, prisoners and public workers.
