Paris (AFP)

Like Friday, the SNCF traffic was to remain very disturbed Saturday, the first day of school holidays, management and unions have not found a compromise that may encourage drivers and controllers to lift their right of withdrawal, exercised after an accident that has made several injured on Wednesday, including a train driver.

Saturday morning, the circulation of TER, Intercités and some Transilien lines remains very disturbed, indicates the SNCF on its site. All low-cost Ouigo trains have been canceled for this day and the management assures that users of the Ouigo will be "automatically reimbursed by Wednesday, October 23".

This work stoppage follows an accident on Wednesday night: a TER linking Charleville-Mézières to Reims hit an exceptional road convoy stuck on a level crossing in Saint-Pierre-sur-Vence (Ardennes). The prefecture of the Ardennes indicates that there were "eleven wounded", some of whom were hospitalized.

Drivers and controllers have asserted their right of withdrawal as early as Thursday and even more so on Friday morning, at the service take. The driver, injured and shocked, "had to rescue the passengers because it was the only SNCF agent on board!", Lamented in a SUD-Rail statement.

At the Saint-Lazare station, Mélissa, a young Parisian met by AFP, who had planned to go see her family in Le Havre, looked puzzled by the bulletin boards: "All my trains have been removed, I do not know what I'm a bit lost, the agents advised me to wait and listen to the announcements. "

An agent invited the microphone "travelers to postpone their trip". One of his colleagues in a red vest repeated the same message to travelers: "For the moment there are no trains for Deauville and Trouville, we are told if a train leaves just before departure." On all lines it will be like that all day ". Disturbances were also announced on the Transilien L and J.

There was notably "almost no train" in Auvergne, according to the SNCF, twenty have been removed, while in Rhône-Alpes, the "trend" is 1 TER out of 2 and 80% of TGV rolling on the zone are in circulation.

For TGVs, the SNCF had announced in the night that the trains would be slightly affected in the South-East region (Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Montpellier) and Atlantic-West (Rennes, Nantes, Bordeaux), with 9 out of 10 trains, but provided for normal traffic in the North and East.

- Five hours of meeting -

A meeting was held between the management of the SNCF and all the unions in the evening of Friday, but after five hours of discussions, the two parties separated without agreement and should be seen in the "current of the week next, "the management told AFP.

In the meantime, she calls the drivers and controllers "to resume work as soon as possible because they are in an irregular situation," she says.

During the meeting, the management made three proposals: to reinforce the alert and train safety system and to "sift through all the safety measures to be applied by the driver in the event of an accident", the time the new departure procedures of the trains that were to be applied on December 15 "and" accelerate very strongly the recruitment in 2019, in particular contributing to the safety of goods and people ".

"These proposals were not seized by the trade unions," the management said after the meeting.

- "Several formal notices" -

SUD-Rail, as well as the CGT-Cheminots, FO-Cheminots and the Fgaac-CFDT, dispute the operating mode "equipment agent alone" which allows to circulate trains without controller, evoking risks of safety for travelers, whereas according to the direction "it exists since tens of years".

For his part, the Secretary of State for Transport Jean-Baptiste Djebbari lamented a "surprise strike (...) outside the legal framework".

"This strike without notice is totally irregular," TER branch director Frank Lacroix said Friday. There were "several formal notices," said the direction.

"The right of withdrawal, it is a right of workers to say: + attention there is something serious +", defended the general secretary of the CGT Philippe Martinez, for which "we avoided a drama because he There is a conscientious driver, attached to the public rail service, who has worked, but we can not continue like that. "

burs-bow-cel / gold

© 2019 AFP