Paris (AFP)

The number of SNCF employees will have decreased by 1% in 2020 and will drop from “1% to 2%” in 2021, announced its CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou on Sunday, but the company has achieved “3,700 permanent contract recruitments” this year, despite the health crisis that affected its results.

According to the SNCF's "Social Report 2019", 7,000 positions were cut in three years, from 2017 to 2019, in the public railway company, the workforce of which increased from around 159,700 agents at the end of 2017 to some 152,700 two years more late.

In 2020, "in the midst of the crisis", the number of posts will decrease by "less than 1%", and "next year between 1 and 2%", declared on BFMTV Mr. Farandou, renamed CEO of SNCF on Wednesday last in the Council of Ministers.

"It is not after all brutal bleeding, it is very moderate, very adjusted, we play on retirements, things are done quietly, it is internal mobility with us: there is no no layoffs at SNCF ", he continued.

Thus, the freight activity having "slightly decreased", "we are going to offer 100 freight drivers to become passenger train drivers: we need 600 per year", he illustrated.

"We even do it by job pools", via the "Solidarity jobs" program set up to "manage these internal mobility issues with anticipation," said Farandou.

"In 2020, the SNCF is 3,700 recruitments on permanent contracts, it is 7,000 work-study contracts that we will be signing with young people, because we have understood that young people have problems, and we want to be there you French people in general and young people in particular ", affirmed Mr. Farandou.

Added to this are "2,500 integration contracts for young people in greater difficulty", he said.

In 2019, the year in which hiring for railway worker status was stopped, in accordance with the provisions of the railway reform, SNCF had recruited some 4,100 people on permanent contracts, a decline of 6.5% compared to 2018.

Recruitments of young people under 25 (around 6,200) were down sharply (-18%), according to the company's “Social Report 2019”.

© 2020 AFP