We need only look at the newspapers of the last few days to get an idea of the number of strikes and instances of industrial action My remarks here are based on the reports of the Koberski Commission and the Zussman Committee at the end of the 1980s, the position paper by a team headed by Guy Mundlak, Industrial Relations in Times of Transition (Israeli Democracy Institute, 2004), the work of my colleagues in the Bank of Israel, especially the late Zvi Zussman, and of other experts outside the Bank of Israel who helped me.
In France, card usage is well above the EU average. Areas with an even stronger card usage (and, correspondingly, a lower share of cash payments) are the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and Great Britain. In those countries, a preference for cards over cash is often highly visible in shops, with merchants often actively encouraging card usage by means of signs or other communication.