In March 2023, over one million people marched throughout France to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s effort to raise the retirement age. In an article published by CBS News, Elaine Cobbe described how the “the massive strikes” severely impacted “rail, road and air transport . . . causing widespread delays and cancellations. They also forced some schools and power plants to close and led to blockades of ports and oil refineries.” Earlier protests were equally massive, one of which “marked the largest single-day union-backed demonstration in France in thirty years.”

Seeing such staggering numbers of workers unite for a common cause is certainly inspiring. Yet it can also be dispiriting for workers in the United States and United Kingdom. It’s hard to imagine such a widespread strike occurring in either country today, when working conditions leave so many feeling alienated, precarious, and isolated. Even given Macron’s success in raising France’s retirement age from sixty-two to sixty-four, Americans and Britons would still stop working later than their French counterparts. Sadly, many in both countries would consider themselves lucky if they are able to retire at all. An alarming number of young workers don’t believe they ever will.

Yet what we’re seeing in France is not due to luck or some spontaneous decision on the part of over a million workers. Rather, as organizers Lydia Hughes and Jaime Woodcock explain in Troublemaking: Why You Should Organize Your Workplace, it is, like any strike, “only the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface . . . there has often been years of organizing and troublemaking.” This process begins in the workplace, where each of us has the power to create transformative change through unionizing.