If you’ve ever traveled to France, chances are you’ve come up against this all-too-common phenomenon. You get to the train station and, without warning, your train is out of service. Or a restaurant is oddly closed during regular business hours.

“C’est la grève,” you may hear from a local, accompanied by a shrug. It’s the strike.

There’s a joke in France about their time-honored tradition of labor protests: A tourist asks a waiter what the signs are about at a protest across the street. The waiter hardly looks up and simply says, “Thursday.”

Strikes, protests, work stoppages and closures are so frequent in France, there are multiple apps and websites devoted to letting locals and tourists alike know what will be open and what will be closed, and those in the know check daily.

A strike today at schools in Dijon, Lyon and Rennes; an ongoing transport strike in Rouen; closures at the Louvre. One........

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