The Belliard bus depot makes up a gigantic set of buildings in Paris’s 18th arrondissement, occupying a long segment of Rue Belliard on the border between Montmartre and the northern banlieues. Behind the garage, you can make out the peak of the Sacré-Cœur at the top of the hill, but from outside the front gates, you see the tramlines that connect the portes de Paris  — the city’s many entry points.

Belliard is one of twenty-five depots belonging to the Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), the Paris transit authority. In France’s longest strike since 1968, over December and January, RATP’s workers mounted more than fifty consecutive days of strike action in order to block the Macron government’s counterreform of the pension system.

Indeed, the Long March of protest that paralyzed the French capital for almost two months — refusing even calls for a Christmas truce — was essentially led by workers from the RATP and the rail workers of the SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français). Although these latter were already veterans of a tough strike battle in 2018, in the defeated fight against rail privatization, they were again active in this latest winter of struggle. But RATP drivers in particular — meaning, in order of wages from bottom to top, bus drivers, tramway drivers, metro drivers, and city express train drivers — have been at the forefront of the action.