About sixty SUD-Rail unionists briefly took over the premises of the Ministry of Ecological Transition in La Défense, near Paris, on Tuesday at noon, to protest against the restructuring plan of Fret SNCF, an AFP journalist noted.
After a general meeting at Paris’ Lyon station, which brought together a hundred people, the group took the RER to La Défense and then entered the Séquoia tower, which houses part of the ministry’s central administration, among cries of “SNCF freight is not for sale” and “Angry rail workers, we are not going to let this happen.”
“Ici vous êtes dans les locaux du ministère de la Transition écologique. La transition, elle porte un nom elle s’appelle Fret SNCF”, a lancé Fabien Villedieu, syndicaliste de SUD-Rail, pendant que des fumigènes étaient lancés dans le hall du Building.
“Today there is a simple way to go green: it is to put all the effort into Fret SNCF. It is not by privatizing it, but by eliminating 500 jobs. That is what we came to tell the ministry,” he added. “We will not abandon our friends at Fret SNCF!”
“Hatch”
The occupation of the premises lasted approximately five minutes.
To avoid the bankruptcy of Fret SNCF, the subject of a Brussels investigation that strongly suspects that this subsidiary of the public railway group has benefited from illegal public aid, the government has initiated a “discontinuity scenario” aimed at liquidating it to replace it with a new one. that it will have to abandon to its competitors the “dedicated trains” – regular freight trains, on 23 routes – which currently represent 30% of traffic and 20% of Fret SNCF’s turnover and employ 10% of its railway workers .
The CGT-Cheminots, SUD-Rail and CFDT unions called a strike on Tuesday at the SNCF to denounce the conditions of opening to competition, which they describe as “social collapse”, and “the dismantling of Fret SNCF”. A strike with little follow-up.
During the general assembly held at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, Europe’s national secretary for Ecology, Les Verts Marine Tondelier, estimated that the restructuring of Fret SNCF “would eliminate hundreds of jobs and return thousands of trucks to French roads.” .
“How do you plan to achieve the 18% modal share of goods by 2030?” he asked, in reference to the objective of doubling the railway’s share in the transport of goods, included in the law. For her, “in these conditions it is impossible.”
Source: BFM TV
