1:19 pm – Trains canceled, delays: strike at SNCF disrupts departures on vacation

Strike and departures on holiday: the call to stop the work launched by the CGT and SUD, still mobilized against the railway reform, disturbs the SNCF traffic Friday, while a new date of mobilization is already provided by the CGT Thursday, July 19.

This two-union strike, which will continue on Saturday, strikes the first two days of the summer holidays and comes at a time when the law of rail reform was promulgated on June 28. This text removes hirings to the status of railway (on January 1, 2020), transforms the SNCF into a public limited company and organizes the opening to competition (from December 2019).

For Friday, the SNCF has planned four TGV and TER out of five, as well as two Intercity trains out of three. All travelers with reservation "have been recontacted in recent days by SMS or email" and "the tickets remain refundable and exchangeable without additional cost," said the SNCF.

But Jacques Canuti, 75, has "no portable "and therefore" did not receive a "cancellation message. This retired boilermaker, sitting Friday morning near a huge suitcase at the Part-Dieu station in Lyon, had to "go to the station to change (his) ticket". Leaving for a stay in his native Corsica, he considers the strike "normal" because "they defend their steak".

The traffic is a little less disturbed Friday that June 28, the last day of the unitary strike to four unions . Unsa and the CFDT, the two other representative organizations at SNCF, decided not to go on strike during the summer holiday period.

In total, there were 6.5% of strikers in the group Friday morning, announced the direction to AFP. With 22.4% of drivers, 22.3% of controllers and 10.2% of controllers on strike. On June 28, the overall rate of strikers had reached 10.26%. And 36.2% of the drivers, 34.2% of the controllers and 14.5% of the controllers were then on strike.

For the continuation, the CGT announced the color: its next strike will take place on Thursday, July 19th, day of the "first meeting with the employers" to negotiate the national collective agreement of the railway branch, said Friday on Cnews Laurent Brun, general secretary of CGT Cheminots.

The following strike dates will be unveiled "as and when to measure, "confirmed Mr. Brun, who plans more in August and" probably "in September. This movement will have "no end point until we have the guarantees we have been asking for since the beginning," he explained.

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For its part, SUD "will consult its structures on Monday during a conference call. decision to register or not in this action decided unilaterally by the CGT will be taken at the end, "said AFP Fabien Dumas, federal secretary of SUD-Rail.

Deploring "a strike that is useless" since "the reform is voted" and "the law promulgated", the Minister of Transport Élisabeth Borne Friday called the unions "to the reason". "The SNCF is a great public service" and the French must be able to "leave serenely on vacation," she said.

"Fortunately there are buses, they make their butter," noted Jeannine Robert, a retired traveler whose train from Lyon Part-Dieu was "30 minutes late". Yet "in the beginning", she was "not too much in agreement" with the development of buses that "make more pollution."

Martine, a badagenarian grandmother, came to pick up her granddaughters at the train station from Lille-Europe to take them to Savoy. "Our TGV is good but we hope that it will go for the TER between Lyon and Chambéry." If this former civil servant "understood at the beginning" the strike movement, "now, she says that's enough!"