“Insufficient public investment”, “the obsession with cutting jobs” but also “the privatization process” at work call into question the serenity of the national rail network”, launched the secretary general of the CGT from the podium. – Railway workers Laurent Brun before the start of the event. Several thousand railway workers marched in Paris on Thursday at the call of the CGT for the defense of the public rail service. The procession, whose route linked Place d’Italie to Montparnasse station, brought together 8,000 railway workers according to the CGT. No police count could be obtained immediately.
“The goal of this day is to aggregate several small struggles that are happening in the territories, for the reopening of small lines or the development of freight for example”, explained Allan Bertu, railway worker in Caen (Calvados). “At home, we have been fighting for years for the reopening of the Caen-Flers line, which is not profitable, while the reforms of recent years have put the SNCF in a market logic”, he lamented. According to him, it is a question of putting “the question of the public monopoly at the heart of the debate” as the presidential election approaches.
The issue of wages
Arnaud Jean, switchman in Sète (Hérault), came to denounce the working conditions of railway workers. “They have just removed a switchman position from us for the weekend,” he denounced. And then there is the issue of salaries. “I am 25 years old in the box, I work evenings and weekends and I earn 1,518 euros per month”, detailed the switchman.
Ditto for Fabien Belhadrouf, station manager in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor) who “working three weekends out of four” receives around 1,800 euros per month. He went to Paris to denounce “the breakage of the public service” and its consequences for travelers “with counters that close or services that disappear or are outsourced to the private sector”. “At Rennes station, for example, a private company now takes care of supporting disabled travelers,” he said indignantly.
For the CGT-Cheminots (first trade union organization at the SNCF), “public ownership of transport” is non-negotiable, while the 2018 railway reform has prepared the ground for opening up to competition. According to the boss of the union Laurent Brun, the demonstration was also intended to challenge the candidates as the first round of the presidential election approaches to tell them “that the next elected official will have to take into account the mobilization of the railway workers”.