The SNCF management offered railway workers a salary increase of 5.9% on average in 2023 after mandatory annual negotiations that are crucial for the group, affected by a strike with little follow-up on Wednesday.
The railway group has proposed a general increase of 2% for all accompanied by a “flat rate increase” of 600 euros gross per year, according to a union source.
With the increase in various bonuses (night work, Sundays, holidays) and the payment of 75% of the transport pass instead of the current 50%, management estimates that the salary increase is close to 6% on average.
“If wages go up too much, ticket prices will eventually go up too”
As of Wednesday, the unions had not yet communicated their position on this offer.
Questioned by BFM Business, Didier Mathis, head of UNSA-Ferroviaire (executives) who did not call the strike, stresses that it is a “first round table that will not be conclusive, it is the start of negotiations.
CGT-Cheminots, SUD-Rail and CFDT-Cheminots called the strike on Wednesday. The three unions ask for measures at least equal to inflation (6.2% in November over a year).
The strike this Wednesday follows three days of mobilization over the issue of wages, on July 6, September 29 and October 18. A first raise had been granted after the July strike.
Last Thursday, the general director of the SNCF, Jean-Pierre Farandou, had warned: “be careful, if wages rise too much, the price of tickets will end up rising too”.
But without a clear announcement of a general wage increase, “management will complicate things in terms of the social climate,” warned Cédric Robert, federal secretary of the CGT-Cheminots.
Drivers and dispatchers want dedicated proposals
“There is a social dialogue at SNCF that (…) works well”, added Clément Beaune, calling on everyone to compromise, “the French would not understand in a period that is not easy, following two Christmases that have already been complicated by the Covid, let’s add complications to them ”.
The climate is nevertheless tense, since the controllers who are organized within a collective outside the unions threaten to go on strike on Christmas and New Year weekends after a very frequent mobilization on the weekend of December 3. They will be received on Thursday.
Flaggers are due to meet with management on Friday. They demand hiring and a salary more commensurate with their responsibilities.
After a first strike threat was not carried out on May 25, they had obtained the hiring of 200 additional traffic agents, a bonus of 600 euros and a temporary increase of 20% of their work bonus for seven months.
The company “has not fulfilled its commitments”, however, believes Erik Meyer of SUD-Rail. For this reason, a new notice of strike has been presented, from December 15 to 19, including the first weekend of the end-of-year holidays.
The prospect of the pension reform, which should be presented around December 15 by the government, is also heating up the unions.
“We will be against this reform, as we had been during the last sequence of 2019-2020,” insisted Cédric Robert, recalling the 58-day strike that paralyzed the SNCF.
Source: BFM TV
