As of Easter Monday, people travelling on French trains will start feeling the effects of a crippling three-month rolling strike action. France’s transport minister calls it “unjustified” and “incomprehensible”.
In an unprecedented move, thousands of French rail workers, known as “cheminots”, will this week go on strike for two out of every five days until the end of June, crippling French train traffic for a total of 36 days. The strike is a response to a government proposal to reform the national railway operator, SNCF, which threatens to end many of the benefits that cheminots have enjoyed until now, including job-for-life guarantees and early retirement schemes.
The strike officially starts on April 3 but SNCF chief Guillaume Pepy said that the anticipated travel chaos is set to kick in on Monday evening – in the midst of people returning from the Easter holidays.
“There will be very few trains from the evening of April 2 to the morning of April 5,” he told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday, estimating that just “one train in five or one in eight” will run.
Although French law stipulates that a minimum service must be made available during strike actions, some train lines are likely to be closed altogether.
On Sunday, the SNCF published a list of the train lines affected by the first of the many rolling strike actions.