SNCF strikes at Christmas? Minister François Durovray has his idea to avoid chaos in stations

POLITICS – Shift, to avoid disaster? While the SNCF unions are mobilizing this Thursday, November 21 for a strike – little attended – in favor of rail freight, the Minister of Transport assures that he wants to avoid end-of-year inconveniences in the future. How ? By postponing salary negotiations until January.

« Salary negotiations will now take place at the start of the year, in January, and no longer at Christmas. announced François Durovray on RMC while his entourage mentioned a request made by the minister to the president of SNCF Jean-Pierre Farandou. “ We no longer want to live under the threat of a strike”he added.

Clearly, the objective of the minister and the management of the company with this “ very simple measurement » is to push back the stinging subject to avoid the threats of social movements in the run-up to Christmas and the end-of-year holidays, a regular threat in recent years.

Problem: salary demands are not always the watchword of strikes at the SNCF, as François Durovray suggests in his argument. Illustration with this winter's movement, organized to protest against the dismantling of rail freight (announced in November) and the throes in the maintenance of the network, absolutely not to influence salary negotiations.

Here, the inter-union (CGT-Cheminots, Unsa-Ferroviaire, Sud Rail and CFDT-Cheminots) are effectively calling for a moratorium on the dismantling – without dismissal – of Fret SNCF, the public operator, leader in freight transport on rail in France. What the government doesn't want to hear about.

They also call for an end to the « filialisation » in the TER (to respond to calls for tenders launched by the regions to operate their regional express train network), and a multi-year programming law to finance the maintenance of the network. What pushes the Minister of Transport to postpone his projects?

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