France's largest labour union may have overplayed its hand

Paris

THERE is a back story to the strikes that have made life miserable for millions across France in recent weeks, and it isn't about high unemployment, immigration or the other issues confronting the country and its increasingly unpopular president, Francois Hollande.

It has to do with raw labour politics - and the disproportionate role played by the General Confederation of Labor, France's oldest union, which has ties to the once-powerful Communist Party, from which it has kept a Marxist-Leninist call to class struggle.