Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: MAXIME GRUSS / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 1:21 p.m., February 2, 2024
To demand salary increases and better consideration of the end of their careers, SNCF controllers are threatening to strike on February 16, 17 and 18 in the middle of the school holidays. The CGT-Cheminots took action on Friday by filing a strike notice which can be extended from February 15 at 7 p.m.
SNCF controllers are threatening to strike on February 16, 17 and 18, a school holiday weekend in a large part of the country, to demand salary increases and better consideration of their end of career. After the Christmas 2022 strike which forced the SNCF to cancel numerous TGVs and left around 200,000 travelers in the lurch, the controllers mobilized via a Facebook group called Collectif national ASCT (CNA) are once again threatening to go on strike, as the 'revealed
Le Monde
on Friday.
This collective, formed outside of any union framework, is not authorized to submit notice and must therefore rely on the unions to make its demands. A notice was therefore filed by Sud-Rail from February 15, 8 p.m. to February 19, 8 a.m., in the middle of the weekend of vacation departures for the academies of Besançon, Dijon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Lyon, Limoges and Poitiers . This weekend is also in the middle of the school holidays of the academies of Ile-de-France as well as Montpellier and Toulouse.
Measures that are slow to come to fruition
The CGT-Cheminots took action on Friday by filing a strike notice which can be extended from February 15 at 7 p.m. The first union of the railway group "calls on railway workers in the train sector, whatever their activity (InOui, Ouigo, TER, Intercités, Transilien) their grade or their function, to stop work on February 16, 17 and 18". Controllers and unions alike believe that certain measures promised during the resolution of the conflict at the end of 2022 are slow to materialize, such as the mandatory presence of two controllers per TGV.
>>
READ ALSO
- SNCF will reimburse 200% of tickets canceled due to the strike
They are also demanding an increase in their work bonus. The CGT wants to increase it to 780 euros per month - compared to 720 euros currently. They finally ask for "recognition of the arduousness of the profession with the renegotiation of the agreement on the gradual cessation of activity", which makes it possible to manage the end of one's career, according to Fabien Villedieu of Sud-Rail. The CFDT-Cheminots also denounced the non-application of the measures resulting from the crisis exit agreement signed at the end of 2022.
An average salary increase of 4.6% in 2024
This union does not officially support the strike, but it has called on its local branches to submit requests for immediate consultation (DCI), prior to giving notice of the strike. In November, the obligatory annual negotiations (NAO), signed by two unions out of four, ratified an average salary increase of 4.6% in 2024 for SNCF railway workers.
Critics of the agreement denounce a general increase of only 1.8%, the rest arising from seniority and individual advancement. Sud-Rail had threatened to strike at Christmas before giving up and meeting in January to “build a movement on wages”.