Unions recommend end to French rail strike
French union leaders said they were satisfied with concessions offered by the national rail operator SNCF, raising hopes for an end to a strike that disrupted train services today.
“Rail workers have been heard,” Eric Falempin, representing the Workers Force union, said after five hours of talks between labour leaders and SNCF management.
Union leaders indicated they were prepared to recommend a halt to the strike when their members meet tomorrow morning.
Four unions called the walkout to protest restructuring, job cuts, pay and what they see as creeping privatisation of the train operator – despite repeated government assurances that rail privatisation is not planned.
President Jacques Chirac also stepped in to guarantee that the SNCF would remain a state-run company “whatever happens”. The SNCF, he said, was a “brilliant French enterprise, essential to France”.
France earlier this year agreed to open its rail market to more European competition before the end of 2006, in exchange for a €1.5bn state-sponsored bailout of the money-losing freight division of SNCF. Unions believe this will open the way for future privatisations.
But Chirac said the SNCF’s statute as a state company not “be put into question by anyone. I naturally guarantee this.”
The SNCF said it would double performance-related bonuses for 2005 – meaning at least €120 per worker – to put a quick end to the strike. Unions also received guarantees for more jobs in certain sectors and the reopening of salary negotiations next year.
“We obtained concrete measures thanks to the mobilisation of rail workers,” said Didier Le Reste, head of the rail workers’ division of the Communist-backed CGT union.
The strike started yesterday evening and caused widespread problems today for rail users. About one in three trains operated as normal on the suburban Paris network, while two in five high-speed TGV trains ran nationwide, the SNCF said. About 80% of international trains were running.
The strike kicked off a week of planned demonstrations that added to problems facing Chirac’s centre-right government, weakened by several weeks of rioting in poor suburbs.
Transport woes were to be compounded tomorrow by a planned one-day strike on the Paris Metro over pay and benefits.
Two unions representing secondary school teachers are due to stop work on Thursday to protest budget restrictions, job cuts and a new substitute-teacher system announced by the government.
