Europe 1 with AFP 16:28 p.m., April 11, 2023

This Tuesday, the Toulouse metro is completely stopped, a great first in the history of this fully automated network. A situation arising from a conflict linked to the mandatory annual negotiations on wages and the inclusion in them of a safeguard clause to catch up with inflation.

Tisséo, the Toulouse public transport network, was strongly affected Tuesday morning by a strike on wages, causing in particular for the first time a stop of the metro, according to concordant sources. The conflict is linked to the compulsory annual negotiations (NAO) on wages and the inclusion in these of a safeguard clause to catch up with inflation.

"It has never happened that the metro stops for a whole day because of a strike movement," Stéphane Chapuis, general secretary of the CGT at Tisséo, told AFP, reporting a total stop of the two automated lines of the metro, very disrupted traffic on the tramway and 45% of bus traffic. These figures were confirmed by the general manager of Tisséo, Thierry Wischnewski, who also pointed out that the metro had never been stopped since the commissioning of the first line in 1993.

Tisseo CEO considers his proposal "quite reasonable"

"Every year, in the NAO (...) we integrate the safeguard clause, this is what allows us the following year to recover inflation: for example, in 2022, we had a 1% increase (in wages), inflation was 5.92%, on January 1, 2023, we had 4.92 catching up," explained Stéphane Chapuis. "And that, this year, they decided they would not give it to us," he lamented.

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According to Thierry Wischnewski, "in recent years, the company has been able to go up to the level of inflation in its salary revaluations except that since 2022 and 2023 in view of the high rate of inflation, it has become more complicated". "The proposal that was made this year, it is 2.8% plus 1% if inflation exceeds 5% and this proposal was rejected, however, I qualify it as quite reasonable," Tisséo's chief executive told AFP.

For the CGT and the other members of the inter-union (SUD, CFDT, FNCR), it is on the contrary "the straw that breaks the camel's back" while "there is a general fed up of the employees", according to Stéphane Chapuis. The strike will end on Wednesday.