SNCF, farmers, air transport… calls for strikes and blockades across France before Christmas

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Already faced with social plans at Michelin and Auchan, the government must face an increase in calls for strikes for November and December in France, in a sluggish economic context and against a backdrop of budgetary austerity for 2025.

“Economic conditions are tightening significantly,” recognized Labor Minister Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet in the JDD.

It reports “an acceleration in the number of collective procedures opened by companies in difficulty. With, in addition, structural transformations in the automobile or mass distribution sectors”, a few days after the announcements by Michelin of the closure in 2026 of its factories in Vannes and Cholet (1,254 jobs) and by Auchan of a draft plan social threat threatening 2,389 jobs in France.

There will probably be announcements of site closures in the coming weeks and months.

Unions from several sectors have launched calls for strikes and mobilization for the coming weeks to protest against social plans and against the consequences of a draft budget – still under discussion in Parliament – ​​which provides for 60 billion euros budgetary effort to redress public accounts in the red.

– Air transport

After the vote by deputies for an increase in taxation on air transport, the national union of airline pilots (SNPL) told AFP on Sunday that it was calling on all employees in the airline sector to stop work and demonstrate on Thursday before the National Assembly.

– SNCF

The unions of the railway company SNCF are calling on them to stop work from Wednesday, November 20, 7:00 p.m. to Friday, November 22, 8:00 a.m., and also launched an indefinite strike notice on Saturday from Wednesday, December 11, 7:00 p.m. (renewable for 24-hour periods), a social movement that could disrupt service during the Christmas holidays.

Representatives of railway workers are calling for a moratorium on the dismantling of Fret SNCF, the division dedicated to rail freight, and are protesting against the terms of opening regional lines to competition.

“The dialogue must succeed” between the leaders of the SNCF and the unions of the public company, judged Sunday the Minister of Transport, François Durovray.

Everyone is responsible. We cannot imagine that at the moment when France must move forward, it will be blocked and that at the moment when the French want to find themselves again, they will not be able to do so.

This railway workers' strike would be “unwelcome” and “incomprehensible” for hundreds of thousands of travelers who “have nothing to do” with freight and “are counting on the train for these end-of-year holidays”, added the vice-president of the National Federation of Transport Users (Fnaut), Michel Quidort.

– Farmers

On the side of farmers, anger is brewing again, less than a year after a movement which partly paralyzed the main roads in France. Symbolic actions have resumed in recent weeks and should increase after mid-November, notably at the call of the majority unions FNSEA and Jeunes Agriculteurs (JA).

Farmers, hit hard this year by poor wheat harvests and a renewed health crisis on livestock farms, are demanding to be able to make a living from their profession: they are waiting for clarity on loans guaranteed by the State. And they categorically refuse the signing of a free trade agreement negotiated between the EU and Latin American countries, Mercosur.

– Civil service

In the Civil Service also, two of the main unions, FO and the CGT, called for a “strike” on Thursday after the failure of a meeting with Minister Guillaume Kasbarian, raising the possibility of mobilizations in early December.

– Analysis laboratories

Four unions representing medical biologists also called on Thursday for Health Insurance to reopen negotiations on their rates, recently revised downwards, otherwise threatening a “shutdown”, i.e. the closure of medical analysis laboratories from 23 to December 31 inclusive.

The CGT against a “violent industrial bloodletting”

The CGT called for “mobilizations for employment in all regions” on December 12.

For its general secretary Sophie Binet, in La Tribune Sundayin industry alone, “we are at the beginning of a violent industrial bloodletting”. “It is estimated that more than 150,000 jobs will disappear, probably more”, according to Ms Binet who predicts a “domino effect” on the subcontractors of “major contractors”.

With AFP

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