In a joint press release sent to AFP, the CGT-Cheminots, Unsa-Ferroviaire, Sud-Rail and the CFDT-Cheminots explain that faced with the lack of “inflection” from the group's management, the strike will be unlimited and renewable for 24-hour periods starting Wednesday, December 11 at 7:00 p.m.
The unions also reiterate their call for a strike from Wednesday, November 20, 7:00 p.m. to Friday, November 22, 8:00 a.m.
This is not the first time that social movements within the SNCF have potentially affected school holidays. In February, controllers went on strike during a holiday weekend, leaving 150,000 people in the lurch. For Christmas in 2022, hundreds of TGVs were canceled, again due to a strike.
The unions are opposed to the announced dismantling of Fret SNCF, the leading rail freight company in France, which will disappear on January 1 to be reborn in the form of two separate companies: Hexafret for freight transport, and Technis for locomotive maintenance. union federations.
This is the second stage of the discontinuity plan negotiated by the French State with the European Commission, to avoid a recovery procedure which could have led to the pure and simple liquidation of the company, which employs 5,000 employees.
In their press release, the trade union organizations “reaffirm that the establishment of a moratorium is possible and necessary to allow the various players to get back around the table, and find ways to guarantee not only the continuity of Fret SNCF, but also its development in the longer term.
“Of suffering”
“We received a total rejection from the management of the company during the first meeting we had at the beginning of the week,” assures Julien Troccaz, the Sud-Rail federal secretary, contacted by AFP .
“We have colleagues who have worked all their lives, for 20, 25 years, for the public company Fret SNCF, and on January 1, everything stops. Today, our colleagues do not know how this will happen on January 1. They know that they are going to be in private companies, but they do not know their social rights, so obviously there is suffering,” continues the trade unionist.
For Thomas Cavel, general secretary of the CFDT-Cheminots, “there must be a window of discussion that opens to move towards a decision that is more in line with the collective interest.”
“The question of SNCF freight is obviously a social question but also a question of collective interest,” he continues, noting that there is time for negotiation before the end-of-year holidays.
“We are well ahead of Christmas. Between now and the departures on vacation, there is more than a month and a half. It is a chance given to social dialogue,” he underlines to AFP.
The unions denounce more broadly in their press release a “trajectory of fragmentation and balkanization of the network”. For several weeks, they have been pointing the finger at “the privatization of TER, Transilien and Intercités activities” as well as “the breakup of SNCF Réseau” as a result of the opening to competition.
In mid-December, the first SNCF Voyageurs railway workers will be transferred to SNCF subsidiaries, created to respond to TER calls for tenders launched by the regions which have decided to open their railway network to competition.
“When the management of the company responds to calls for tenders, it will be via private companies, which allows the bosses to start from scratch on the social rights of employees: there is a re-negotiation of the entire framework social that the SNCF has known for years”, affirms Julien Troccaz.
When contacted, SNCF management declined any comment.
