The SNCF is trying to make up for the lack of access to the toilets, in particular by offering its freight drivers the opportunity to test menstrual panties. But working for so long without access to the toilets is unworthy of the CGT, according to Maryse Thaëron Chopin.
The question is sensitive. While journeys can take around 7 hours, freight train drivers do not have onboard toilets. The SNCF has decided to tackle this problem of access to sanitary facilities by mapping, among other things, the toilets along the railway tracks. Through discussions, particularly with female drivers, SNCF mixité, which works for equality within the public railway group, has undertaken to reflect more particularly on the situation of women who menstruate at work.
But one of the proposals created a stir: the railway group thus proposed to its thirty freight drivers to try wearing menstrual panties, which can be worn for several hours at a stretch and which serve as hygienic protection, but in no urinal case.
For its part, the railway company regrets that public opinion has taken hold of this singular measure without placing it in its context. According to Anne-Sophie Nomblot, head of SNCF Mixité, “experimenting with period panties […] is part of a set of actions aimed at improving the working conditions of drivers at Freight and throughout the company.».
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The SNCF has indeed undertaken a more global action plan such as the mapping of toilets along the railway tracks. The ambassadors of the mixed SNCF network are also considering giving employees access to these toilets.
Still, Anne-Sophie Nomblot stressed that wearing menstrual panties was not a panacea: the problematic access to sanitary facilities for freight drivers is still current and is not avoided. As for the installation of toilets in these trains, the SNCF responds laconically “it doesn’t exist, it never existed.» .
According to Maryse Thaëron Chopin, member of the women/mixed collective of the CGT Federation of Railway Workers, the SNCF does not seem to question working without access to toilets. Why don’t the freight trains stop? asks Maryse Thaëron Chopin. In reality, freight trains cannot stop at passenger stations and are therefore obliged to park at marshalling stations. Which were mostly destroyed according to Maryse Thaëron Chopin. Furthermore, Maryse Thaëron Chopin regrets that the shift commissions for female drivers and the CSSTs were not called upon in this global action plan, at least that they were not the main actors in this reflection.
For its part, the SNCF ensures that freight drivers always have the possibility of stopping to go to the toilets in passenger stations or in marshalling stations, where the toilets are always accessible, in 80% of cases. A driver can always, in case of pressing need or emergency of any kind, ask the traffic officer to stop his train at the next station to stop there. “It’s like in a car, you choose the gas station where you want to stop.“Words largely denied by the National CGT Federation of Railwaymen:”we don’t stop like that in a yard, you need an authorization and the stations have occupancy plans»…
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