The four trade unions at France's rail company SNCF are calling for a general strike and protest marches on Thursday, ahead of a rolling strike mid December. They are angry over the proposed dismantling of freight operations and the opening of regional lines to competition.
After an initial strike day on Thursday, the CGT-Cheminots, Unsa-Ferroviaire, Sud-Rail and CFDT-Cheminots unions said the renewable and unlimited strike action would begin on 11 December.
"There is a lot of anger and frustration. Some of us are ready to fight, we are feeling pretty low," according to Sébastien Mourgues, regional secretary of the CGT Languedoc Roussillon in the south of France.
"We are sounding the alarm and we want real negotiations," he told Franceinfo on Wednesday.
"We have made a series of proposals and we are asking for a parliamentary debate so that the decisions taken are not unilateral."
Although unions are hoping for a strong turnout, SNCF said traffic will be almost normal on the high speed TGV, specifying that there would be some disruptions on regional lines with seven TER trains out of ten on average.
Intercity trains are likely to be affected with only one in two trains in circulation, and no night trains.
In Ile-de-France, disruptions will be limited and will mainly focus on the RER D and line R of the Transilien, strongholds of the Sud-Rail union, with only one train in three.
In recent weeks, the unions have criticised the continuing shake-up of the railway operator, slamming the "fragmentation" of the network.
Last week, Julien Troccaz, the Sud-Rail federal secretary referred to the changes to the freight sector alarming.
"Our colleagues don't know what's going to happen on 1 January. They know they're going to be working for private companies, but they don't know what their social rights are."
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In 2023, the European Commission announced an in-depth investigation into whether France breached EU rules on state support by subsidising SNCF's freight division.
The French government launched a restructuring process which will see France's top rail freight company replaced next January by two separate companies, Hexafret and Technis.
The plan was negotiated by the French government and the European Commission to avoid a reorganisation procedure that could have led to the outright liquidation of the company, which employs 5,000 people.
Trade unions said: "A moratorium is possible and necessary to allow the various players to get back to the table and find ways of guaranteeing not only the continuity of Fret SNCF, but also its development over the longer term."
Reorganisation, competitiveness
Another point of contention is the opening of regional lines to competition.
Mourgues said this privatisation would result in the transfer of SNCF staff to subsidiaries, and would have the effect of lowering the social conditions of railway workers.
On 14 December, around 1,200 railway workers in Amiens, Nice and Nantes will be transferred from SNCF Voyageurs to companies that won tenders launched by the regions for the regional TER train market.
The transferred railway workers will retain certain advantages such as retirement rights and travel benefits but will also undergo a reorganisation of their working time, in order to increase productivity.
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"There is a very strong awareness [among the railway workers] that these structural changes are obviously not going in the right direction," general secretary of the CFDT-Cheminots, Thomas Cavel said.
SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou insisted that the process had been underway for many years and that the social negotiations were well advanced.
"The French would not understand a long and hard strike in December," he said in an interview with Sunday newspaper La Tribune Dimanche.
Privatisation
In 2018, President Emmanuel Macron took on the SNCF's powerful unions to push through an overhaul that stripped employees of jobs-for-life and pension guarantees, while promising to revive slower lines.
Labour bosses called it the first step toward privatisation. They staged massive transport strikes but failed to derail the reform.
Industrial action at SNCF has repeatedly disrupted travel during school holidays.
In February, train controllers went on strike during a holiday weekend, leaving 150,000 people stranded.
A Christmas strike in December 2022 affected some 200,000 holidaymakers.
(with AFP)
