SNCF counts cost of strikes
PARIS: France’s rail operator said yesterday that the rolling strikes against plans to overhaul the debt-laden company had already cost it around €100 million ($123 million) as the standoff between unions and the government drags on.
Train drivers and other staff at the stateowned SNCF have vowed to continue walking off the job two days out of every five until at least June 28 unless the government backs down on its reforms.
“The stoppages so far are costing around €20 million per strike day and the disruption often spills into non-strike days,’’ SNCF chief Guillaume Pepy told BFM television yesterday, the fourth day of the strike.
“From what I can see, France has not been paralysed,” he said, “but clients are being heavily penalised.”
Both sides are claiming broad public support.
An Ifop poll published on Sunday showed 62% in favour of the government’s reforms, compared with a slim majority of 51% in the same survey a week earlier.
Yet unions point to the nearly €530,000 in donations raised as of yesterday morning via a web-based fund for compensating strikers’ lost wages.
“Nobody wants a long, difficult conflict but for now, we’re up against a wall,” Philippe Martinez of the CGT union, the largest at the SNCF, told Europe 1 radio. “The government has forced us to take this type of action.”
President Emmanuel Macron, who has barely spoken publicly on the standoff, is set to give an hour-long televised interview on Thursday, nearly a year after sweeping away France’s traditional parties with his election victory.
The 40-year-old centrist, who is pushing reforms to swathes of the French economy, will also appear for a two-hour primetime interview on Sunday night, facing journalists from BFM and the hard-hitting investigative news site Mediapart.
Parliament was scheduled to begin debating the SNCF overhaul yesterday, though Macron has said he will implement the changes by decree — another bone of contention for unions.
The government says it needs to move quickly ahead of the opening of French passenger rail traffic to competition starting in 2020, part of an EU-wide opening of state rail markets.
Unions are protesting a plan that would do away with the jobs-for-life and early retirement guarantees enjoyed by current rail employees.
The SNCF would also be transformed into a private company whose shares are owned by the state — which unions see as a first step toward privatisation, despite government denials.
The standoff promises weeks of headaches for the network’s 4.5 million daily passengers — which has coincided with a series of strikes at Air France by workers seeking a 6% raise.
The airline said yesterday that onequarter of flights would be cancelled on average today, with another day of strike set for tomorrow.
Just one in five high-speed TGV trains were running yesterday, compared with one in seven or eight during last week’s strikes, and about 20% of the Eurostar trains in and out of London have been cancelled.
Pepy noted “quite heavy participation” for the strike yesterday, “though there are more trains than last time”.
He also warned of lasting consequences for the SNCF if the strike extends into the summer.
“When our freight train clients see that the service isn’t reliable... they start using the roads, and it’s very difficult to get them to come back,” Pepy said.