Towards a complicated end of the year on the social front? Several sectors of activity have announced that they have started a strike or filed strike notices, notably affecting transport, the civil service and medical laboratories.
Here's what's planned in the coming days and weeks.
Strike at Auchan
In a press release published on Facebook, Auchan employees in France announced that they had started a strike this Thursday, November 7. The start of an “indefinite strike” to protest against the dismissal of 2,389 people, as announced by management.
The CGT demands the “pure and simple” abandonment of this project, demanding the maintenance of all jobs. She also asks that the State “takes responsibility by ordering the reimbursement of the aid received”.
An unlimited strike at Michelin?
“A monumental distress”: employees gathered on Friday in front of a Michelin site in Clermont-Ferrand, where the group's head office is located, in support of their colleagues in Vannes (Morbihan) and Cholet (Maine-et-Loire) whose factories must close . The CGT, which has called for an indefinite strike on the Clermont sites, is planning a demonstration on Wednesday which will end in front of the group's head office and is calling on employees from all Michelin sites in France to participate on this occasion.
A CSEC (Central Social and Economic Committee) must be held on the same day to present to the union organizations the plan to close the two factories. Around 200 demonstrators, employees and unionists gathered at the call of the CGT, brandished flags in the colors of the union but also of the CFE-CGC, the CFDT and Sud, in front of the entrance to the La Combaude factory, which manufactures baking molds and whose doors were closed.
At the SNCF, a first mobilization before a “longer” one in December?
All SNCF unions have called for a 24-hour strike on Thursday, November 21, following a meeting with the management of the railway group to discuss the dismantling of Fret SNCF and the opening to competition.
In a press release entitled “the time has come for conflict at the SNCF”the CGT-Cheminots, the Unsa-Ferroviaire, Sud-Rail and the CFDT-Cheminots warn that this day of strike is “an ultimatum” before “a longer and stronger strike movement in December” if the government and the SNCF do not respond to their demands.
The day after the announcement of the dismantling of Fret SNCF, targeted by proceedings brought by the European Commission for illegal public aid, the railway workers decided to raise their voice. To avoid a strike in December just before the Christmas holidays, the unions are demanding “stopping the SNCF Freight discontinuity process”, l’“stopping the TER, Transilien and Intercités process of subsidiarization” and one “multi-annual programming law for the modernization of the rail system”.
In the Civil Service, an inter-union meeting Tuesday, November 12
Two of the main civil servant unions, FO and the CGT, called this Thursday, November 7 for a “strike” after the failure of a meeting with the Minister of the Civil Service, Guillaume Kasbarian, and a week of tensions following the government announcements of new savings for the public service, to the tune of 1.2 billion euros.
Several representatives left the ministry before the end of the meeting, and half of the organizations called for “mobilizations” the modalities of which should appear on the menu of a new meeting of the inter-union on Tuesday at 4 p.m. The two main organizations, the CGT and FO, even called for “strikes” movements, raising the possibility of mobilizations at the beginning of December.
In the airline sector
The SNPL union, national union of airline pilots has filed a strike notice for November 14. He intends to protest against the sharp increase in the solidarity tax on plane tickets: the Chirac tax. The SNPL judges this increase “irrational”.
A day of struggle “for employment” on December 12
Asked about the situation of Vencorex, Sophie Binet judged that this affair is “representative but unfortunately not isolated”. The CGT identified “more than 180 layoff plans throughout France which concern more than 100,000 direct and indirect jobs, mainly in industry”.
A number “at a minimum since the list grows every day”she noted, calling for the holding on December 12 of a “day of convergence of all struggles for employment” In France.
Medical biologists in December?
Four unions representing medical biologists called, this Thursday, November 7, on Health Insurance to reopen negotiations on their rates, recently revised downwards, otherwise threatening a “shutdown”. i.e. the closure of medical analysis laboratories from December 23 to 31 inclusive. “Health Insurance has the power to stop the shutdown movement (…) in order not to penalize patients”writes in a press release “the inter-union of biologists” (SDBIO, BiOMED, SNMB, SLBC).
