Europe 1 with AFP 7:21 p.m., December 22, 2022

Discussions resume at the SNCF to try to save the New Year. Remotely, by videoconference, the management of the railway company met with the actors of the strike to try to find a solution before the last Christmas holidays. 'year.

An emergency meeting, for a crisis situation.

The management of the SNCF brought together Thursday evening by videoconference the unions of the public group to prevent the strike of the controllers, which will disrupt the Christmas weekend, from extending into the New Year. The CGT-Cheminots, the Unsa-Ferroviaire, SUD-Rail and the CFDT-Cheminots are invited as the government has put pressure on the management of the SNCF to find a solution before the New Year weekend, also threatened by a strike notice.

SNCF CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou had originally planned to bring the unions together on Friday morning.

"I don't understand this strike," conceded the group's boss, recalling that there was "no strike call from any union".

According to information from Europe 1, this remote gathering was a real emergency meeting, even if it is already too late for Christmas.

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The strike is led by an informal group of captains organized on Facebook and rejecting any union membership, which makes negotiations very complicated.

On the airwaves, members of the government have been marching since Wednesday to condemn an ​​"incomprehensible and unjustifiable" strike, in the words of Transport Minister Clément Beaune, who however dismissed the idea of ​​​​a requisition of the strikers.

"What we expect from the management of the SNCF today is that it finds a solution in the next few hours, I mean in the next few hours", Bruno Le Maire declared on Sud Radio Thursday morning.

A 200% refund

SNCF customers began to receive emails offering them 200% compensation in vouchers, whether they managed to redeem their tickets or not.

With the cancellations of some travellers, a few places were still available Thursday evening on the main routes.

But the canceled or full trains have pushed many of them to turn to coaches or carpooling.

Flixbus told AFP that it would transport 115,000 passengers from Friday to Monday, 10 to 15% more than in 2019. And BlaBlaCar Bus said to double certain rotations for Thursday and Friday, between Paris and several cities including Nantes, Lyon or reindeer.

"We're fed up, it's really becoming a disaster. No, we can't take people hostage all the time," complained Christian Petit, retired, at the Gare de Lyon.

Unreachable strikers

Nearly half of the controllers will be on strike this weekend, causing the cancellation of one train out of three on Friday, two trains out of five on Saturday and Sunday, especially TGVs.

“We gave everything to avoid the strike,” recalled Mr. Farandou, insisting on the mandatory annual negotiations which ratified in early December an average salary increase of nearly 6% in 2023 for railway workers, according to him.

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"And for the TGV captains, we even added 1.5 more points", he underlined.

"We have provided employment, we have guaranteed that there will be two skippers per TGV and we have made career development commitments".

Jean-Pierre Farandou assesses the cost of the strike at several tens of millions of euros.

"The compensation will cost more than the measures requested by the captains", ironically Fabien Dumas, federal secretary SUD-Rail, who does not himself call for a strike.

"What was put on the table by the management for the captains was very far from the claims," ​​he told AFP.

“We have been negotiating since the beginning of November, therefore returning responsibility for the canceled trains to the employees, I find the string a little big”.

But the unions are not comfortable with this strike, which they have no control over.

"This situation is unacceptable", launched the secretary general of the CFDT Laurent Berger.

The CFDT-Cheminots did not call a strike but, like the CGT-Cheminots and SUD-Rail, nevertheless maintained its notice, which gives the framework to the controllers to stop the work.

The collective is unreachable, and their private group is no longer visible on Facebook.