When workers at Electricite de France, the big French power company, want to protest management actions they sometimes sabotage their own company and cause blackouts for thousands of their own customers. BGE owner Constellation Energy has agreed to expand its partnership with EDF in nuclear-powered electricity. BGE employees don't seem to be quite as radical. From The Times:

It was the second time in a week that blackouts had hit the Paris region as striking gas and electricity workers adopted radical tactics to support their call for a 10 per cent pay rise and an end to outsourcing of jobs.

They are denounced as industrial saboteurs by the Government and face disciplinary action and prosecution, but say they are determined to press ahead with what they portray as a struggle against free-market forces.

The movement got off to a slow start. “We’ve been on strike for three weeks but at first no one paid any attention at all,” he said. “It was only when some of the guys started cutting the electricity and gas that things got moving.”

The militants armed with a map showing the substations and keys to the locks can shut down power to thousands of homes in a few minutes.

Last Thursday 66,500 EdF customers lost their electricity supply, some for several hours. In Douai, northern France, two patients in intensive care had to be moved when a hospital lost power for 40 minutes.

Earlier this week the activists sought to win public support by switching 350,000 customers from peak to off-peak tariffs — a 50 per cent saving. They also restored power to hundreds of households that were cut off by EdF because they had failed to pay their bills.