Fourth SNCF Strike This Year

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On 2 June 2005, four of the SNCF’s eight unions called for a national strike in defence of wages, jobs and the public service. They are also hostile to the company’s new freight plan.

This one-day strike was the fourth since the beginning of the year, and the unions that called it were not expecting a high participation rate. In addition, although all the unions had originally agreed on a joint strike call, four of them, the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFDT), the French Christian Workers’ Confederation (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens, CFTC), the General Independent Federation of Locomotive Engineers (Fédération générale autonome des agents de conduite, FGAAC), and the National Federation of Independent Union (Union nationale des syndicats autonomes, UNSA) withdrew their strike notice on 20 May 2005, after a message from the company’s management met their expectations on certain points. So the stoppage was called for by only four unions, the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT), the federation of Railworkers’ Unions (Sud-rail), the General Confederation of Labour - Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail - Force ouvrière) and the French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff - General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff (Confédération française de l’encadrement - confédération générale des cadres, CFE-CGC), representing 70% of votes cast in elections to employee representation bodies. On 31 May, two days before the strike date, a reconciliation meeting was held, as stipulated by the social alert procedure in force in the company since autumn 2004 (FR0412101N), but was unable to resolve a conflict that bears on significant aspects of company policy.

A train privately operated by Connex made its maiden journey on the Lorraine regional network on 30 May 2005, and this gave a high profile to rail deregulation, which is at the heart of union protest. The third rail package now under discussion between the European Parliament and the European Commission has run into strong opposition from European Transport Federation (ETF), the European transport branch organisation affiliated to both the European Trade Unions Congress (Confédération européenne des syndicats, CES) and the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF). The CGT, CFDT, CGT-FO, CFTC and Unsa rail unions all belong to this organisation. The third package provides for regional rail transport being, in time, thrown open to competition, and the unions denounce this, claiming it means that the notion of public service would be abandoned. The measures taken by the French National Rail Company (Société nationale des chemins de fer français, SNCF) to restructure its freight branch are set in the context of deregulation. They include around 2,500 redundancies planned for 2005 in this branch (out of a total of 3,500 for the whole company), a cut in goods freight volume and in SNCF capacity in this field. The announcement, a few days before the strike, that 250 jobs were to be saved and a further 250 might be was not enough to get the strike call lifted, nor was the letter M. de Robien sent the unions just before ceasing to be Transport Minister, asking them not to take part in a stoppage in his view damaging to both the SNCF and its freight business.

In such a context, the participation rate - around 26% - shows a difficult atmosphere and serious tensions within the state-owned company. On 19 January 2005, 37% of railworkers responded to a strike call launched by all eight unions (FR0502101N) and 30% did so again on 10 March. To some extent, the movement is running out of steam. Rail traffic was seriously disturbed both on commuter and main lines, but was not brought to a standstill. International lines (Thalys, Eurostar) were running normally. Paralysis was even less likely because the Independent Drivers Union (FGAAC) was not one of those calling for this strike. Participation was high in four regions, all of them in the south. In the Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and, especially, Montpellier regions, the percentage of strikers was above the average, whereas it was below in the North, the Strasbourg region and Ile de France. Only ten or so towns followed, at least in part, Sud-rail, the only organisation to call for the movement to be prolonged.

The management claims that the social alert procedure has, in the mere six months it has been in force, brought about a significant reduction in the number of local disputes and, as a result, cannot be seen as a failure on account of this particular strike.

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