Canceled trains, delays: strike at SNCF disrupts departures on vacation

Canceled trains, delays: strike at SNCF disrupts departures on holiday
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AFP / File
/ CHRISTOPHE SIMON

Strike and departures on holiday: the call to stop the work launched by the CGT and SUD, still mobilized against the railway reform, disrupts Friday the SNCF traffic, while a new date of strike has already been announced

This strike, which will continue on Saturday, strikes the first two days of the great departures on summer holidays and comes at a time when the reform of the SNCF was promulgated on June 28th. It abolishes hiring as a railway employee (as of 1 January 2020), transforms the SNCF into a public limited company and organizes the opening to competition (from December 2019).

SNCF has planned four out of five TGVs and TERs, two Intercity trains out of three and three out of four Transilien trains. All travelers who had made a 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 not "no laptop" and so 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 than on the last day of the unitary strike to four organizations, June 28th Unsa and the CFDT, the other two representative unions of the group, have decided not to go on strike during the summer holiday period.

For the rest, the CGT announced the color: its next strike will be held on Thursday, July 19, the day of the "first meeting with the bosses" to negotiate the national collective agreement of the railway branch, said Friday on Cnews Laurent Brun, General Secretary of the CGT Cheminots

The following strike dates will be announced "as and when", confirmed Mr. Brun, who plans more in August and "probably" in September.

This movement will have "no end point until we have the guarantees that we ask from the beginning," said the union leader denouncing "the responsibility of the government" always "absolutely intractable", including on the question of the status of railway workers.

"Fortunately, there are the buses"

"For us, the battle is far from over", added on Radio Clbadique Philippe Martinez, the number one of the CGT. "There are still some for a little while if the government does not change its tune," he warned.

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 get 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 ex-civil servant "understood at the beginning" the strike movement, "now that's enough", she says.

06/07/2018 12:36:02 –
Paris (AFP) –
© 2018 AFP