During a hearing in the Senate this Tuesday, SNCF boss Jean-Pierre Farandou defended the agreement signed with the unions on the end of careers within the public company.
Jean-Pierre Farandou explains. Heard this Tuesday in the Senate, the CEO of the SNCF answered numerous questions about the agreement on the end of careers signed at the end of April with the unions of the railway company.
“I have heard the doubts and the criticisms. My conviction is that it is a good agreement which does not circumvent the pension reform, which is in the practices of large public and private companies,” assured the leader .
The agreement in question provides for an additional pay grade for railway workers at the end of their career and early retirement measures for certain professions such as drivers or controllers. It provoked the anger of the right and part of the government, which saw it as a circumvention of the pension reform.
However, for Jean-Pierre Farandou, the two parts of the text “are in line with the pension reform”.
The first part provides two mechanisms to support employees who will work longer by application of the law: one “offers career progression and remuneration prospects”, while the other “allows professional retraining to be offered to agents carrying out difficult jobs”, indicated the boss of the SNCF for whom “with these two systems we are completely in the spirit” of the pension reform.
“I can finance 35 million”
The second part is only an adaptation of an agreement in force for 16 years which “provided for complex mechanisms for cessation of activity”. The renegotiation of this agreement “was initiated at the request of the public authorities,” the leader further assured.
Above all, the cost of the end-of-career agreement, estimated at 35 million euros, is considered “reasonable”, especially since it “will not cost anything to the taxpayer, nor to clients, nor to pension funds.” , he continued.
SNCF having published a net profit of 1.3 billion euros in 2023, “I can finance 35 million”, also declared Jean-Pierre Farandou.
The latter added that this cost should be put into perspective in view of the railway workers’ payroll of around 10 billion euros.
