French president Nicolas Sarkozy, now heading off to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire for his holiday, has boasted that this summer’s extraordinary legislative session provides the merest foretaste of his reform agenda . Few of his coming reforms, though, will have the symbolic impact of the “minimum services” bill that cleared the National Assembly on Wednesday night. Modest in its specifics, the bill is seismic in its implications. Through a couple of small regulatory changes, it opens the question of the role of labour unions in France’s economy.

Le service minimum entered the national vocabulary with the report of the so-called Mandelkern commission in July 2004. The commission addressed ways to stop the economic damage and inconvenience that reverberate through France during its frequent transport strikes, particularly huge national stoppages like those in 1995 and 2003. One recommendation was that transport workers be required to give 48 hours notice before striking. That way, innocent bystanders – local authorities, businesses, commuters, schoolchildren – could arrange transportation alternatives. Mr Sarkozy made it a campaign promise. The law, slated to go into effect on January 1, includes the 48-hour warning, sanctions for those who flout it, secret balloting of strikers once a strike is a week old and a ban on paying workers for strike days. The goal is simple and popular: to keep trains running during strikes.