Pilots’ strike threat hangs over Euro 2016
PARIS: Strikes by rail workers and flooding disrupted France on Friday, as the new threat of a pilots’ strike hung over Euro 2016 football tournament a week before the tournament kicks off.
Unions pressed on with the rail stoppages for a third full day, but the number of staff taking part fell to just above 10 per cent, the SNCF rail operator said.
Services in Paris were hit, but almost all high-speed trains were operating.
However the train strike was expected to cause more disruption over the weekend.
In the capital and further south, attention has shifted from the lingering strikes to the worst flooding for three decades.
Just as the risk to Euro 2016 of an air traffic controllers’ strike faded, unions for Air France pilots threatened late Thursday to call a four-day stoppage beginning on June 11, when the championships will be in full swing.
Transport Minister Alain Vidalies described the pilots’ strike call as ‘irresponsible’.
“It would be incomprehensible if flights are halted in France” during the month-long event hosted by France, he said.
“Everyone needs to contribute to making Euro 2016 a success.”
The minister said the pilots’ strike, the latest in a long-running dispute over working conditions at France’s national carrier, was just ‘an attempt to gain headlines’.
“I hope dialogue will win the day,” he said.
Household rubbish risked building up in the Paris region and elsewhere in the country due to strikes against the government’s labour reforms which are at the heart of the wave of industrial unrest.
Three of the four main refuse centres in Paris were blockaded by union activists. — AFP