The strike by SNCF controllers is due to end this Sunday after disrupting the winter holiday weekend, with the cancellation of one in two TGVs.
In total, the SNCF estimated that 150,000 passengers, of the million who were supposed to travel, were unable to take the train during the three days of strike. Rail traffic has been “severely disrupted” by a controllers’ strike from Thursday at 8:00 p.m. to Monday at 8:00 a.m., the railway company warned. The movement is very popular with three out of four controllers striking for pay increases.
This weekend sees the first returns from zone C (Paris, Montpellier and Toulouse), but also departures from zone A (Lyon, Bordeaux, Dijon…), and the SNCF has favored connections with the stations skiing of the Alps where the trains ran. complete in both directions.
Some travelers on the Paris-Lyon line turned to the trains of the railway company Trenitalia, which were 8% fuller than last year. “The peak exists this year, but it is difficult to say what part is natural demand and what is the impact of strike announcements,” stressed a spokesperson for the new competitor SNCF.
A changers’ strike next weekend?
If the controller social movement is coming to an end, the problems for travelers may not be over. And rightly so, the money changers could in turn go on strike next weekend, which will be the busiest of the holidays. Sud-Rail has already submitted a strike notice from Friday, February 23 at 11 a.m. until Saturday, February 24 at 11 p.m. These are “agents of all Infrastructure Operation Establishments (EIC)”.
“Next week, we will have change colleagues who have decided to stop working. I think management should stop betting. What we have to do is sit around the table, negotiate and respond to the demands of the controllers, of the changers and then all the railways. workers,” Julien Troccaz, federal secretary of Sud-Rail, told BFMTV.
Remuneration, working conditions and hiring
The demands of the changers are essentially the same as those of the controllers: “We continue with the triptych ‘working conditions, salaries/remuneration and employment'”, explained Julien Troccaz. The Sud-Rail union denounces in particular the unfulfilled promises following a social movement in May 2022:
“During the May 2022 movement we had made progress, certainly not enough yet, but significant. At that time, and on the basis of a consultation with the largest possible number of agents in D2I (Declaration of individual intention to go on strike , editorial note), we chose to take what they gave us in ‘cash’, and as promised we gave SNCF Réseau the benefit of the doubt, we lifted the notification,” the union organization justifies. “We were wrong. The employers betrayed us immediately (proration of 1,000 euros for part-time workers, still insufficient hiring in some EICs, endless postponements regarding the end of the degree),” he continues.
In addition to the change in the organization of work and the “massive hiring” of agents, the union demands “the revaluation of the traffic operating subsidy by 300 euros per month.”
For its part, the SNCF management wants to give peace of mind and affirms that negotiations are underway. The CGT, for its part, is delaying and waiting to see the result of the discussions. The union organization, however, does not rule out also calling a strike, estimating that, despite the hiring announcements of May 2022, the changers still have difficulties in “measuring the real positive impacts on their working conditions.”
Source: BFM TV
