Why strikes and poor polling aren't derailing Macron's reform plans

Remy Pichon joined tens of thousands on the streets of France this week to protest President Emmanuel Macron’s labor reform. They opened the first front in a battle whose outcome could reshape the French economy, or keep things largely as they already are.

Mr. Pichon’s positioning is clear. “We are here to protect a century of workers’ rights that we have earned,” says the laboratory technician, who missed a day of pay to march down the tree-lined boulevards of Paris.

But if Pichon's rhetoric, and the sea