France braces for holiday travel chaos amid pensions strike
PARIS: Cancelled trains, packed roads, frazzled nerves: Travellers across France scrambled on Friday to begin Christmas vacations upended by a weeks-long transport strike over a pensions overhaul that unions have vowed to defeat.
Hopes of a holiday truce were dashed after talks between the government and union leaders this week failed to ease the standoff, with train operator SNCF warning of massive cancellations ahead of the holidays.
Many stranded travellers turned to car rental agencies or sharing platforms, but the lastminute surge in demand meant vehicles were hard to come by.
“We’ve seen twice as many requests in some regions,” mainly Paris and southwest France, said Robert Ostermann, France director for Europcar.
Taxi companies in Paris had already stopped taking Friday reservations early this week as many metro lines remained shut, while Twitter has been awash with comments from irate Uber users asked to pay two to three times normal rates.
Others booked trips on buses, whose drivers have been allowed until Dec 24 to stay behind the wheel for more hours per shift to cope with an “emergency situation,” according to a government decree published Wednesday.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said Thursday that talks had made progress and called on unions to lift the strike “so that millions of French can join their families for the end of this year”.
Although the moderate UNSA union agreed, the hardline CGT and Force Ouvrier unions said they would not let up.
“It’s time for the government to realise that this project is a serious mistake,” FO chief Yves Veyrier told France 2 television on Friday. — AFP