Paris (AFP)
SNCF announced on Tuesday its intention to take legal action for "insult" following an editorial in the VSD magazine comparing strikes in the railway company to the practices of the Islamic State jihadist group.
"We are filing summary proceedings on the basis of insult," a spokesman for the railway company told AFP.
"We could not remain unresponsive to these obnoxious remarks," he said.
In an editorial of the latest issue of VSD, the editor of the weekly Georges Ghosn attacks the strikes of the railway workers, which he says "hostage families" and "workers", before a big social movement announced on December 5th.
"They use the employees in France as Daesh uses women and children in human shields in Syria," writes Georges Ghosn.
This reference to the Islamic State jihadist group is highlighted prominently, in red and in capitals, in an intertitle of the magazine. The practice is this time attributed to "the SNCF" as a whole.
Georges Ghosn told AFP that he was "astonished" by the approach of SNCF's communications director, who does this "undoubtedly to please the unions with whom the management is negotiating", he said. launched.
"Basically, the editorial accuses the unions and the railwaymen", and not the company, said Georges Ghosn. "They use the workers and the families for legitimate internal demands, they take the users hostage".
The CGT-Cheminots had called on Monday the direction "to react and to initiate legal consequences to this indignitable denigration", denouncing in a statement "this editorial full of depth and all in measure".
"The right to strike is an acquired right of high struggle by the employees of our country, it does not lead to death, it does not seek terror.It allows to express demands for the satisfaction of which the employees sacrifice a part of their salary ", added the first syndicate of the SNCF.
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