QForty-eight hours after the “March against high cost” of the left parties, the CGT, at the forefront of the social conflict in the refineries, and FO in particular, call on employees in all sectors to strike and demonstrate on Tuesday for wages and against requisitions.
The circulation of regional trains in Ile-de-France will be disrupted with one TER and one Intercity train out of two on average. It will be “slightly disrupted” on Ouigo trains as well as on the Atlantic network, as will the France-Spain and Eurostar links, SNCF and RATP announced on Monday.
In Paris, RATP bus traffic will also be disrupted with two out of three buses on average, while metro traffic will be normal on most lines and slightly disrupted on lines 6, 12 and 13.
Three out of four RERs will operate on the portions of lines A and B operated by RATP.
The CGT identified this weekend “140 assembly points throughout France, which is already good” given the short time allowed to the activists to organize themselves, noted to AFP the confederal secretary Céline Verzeletti.
The CGT, FO, Solidaires, the FSU and the youth organizations Fidl, MNL, Unef and the High School Life, announced Thursday the organization of this day of interprofessional mobilization, in the extension of the actions of the employees of the oil industry, and in reaction to the government’s decision to resort to the weapon of requisitions to facilitate the distribution of fuel.
An approach that “set fire to the powder”, according to the secretary general of the CGT Philippe Martinez. And that the government does not intend to give up: claiming that “the time for negotiation (was) past”, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire called on BFM TV on Monday to “release the deposits of fuels and refineries”.
Illustration of this firmness, the depot of Feyzin (Rhône) will be requisitioned Monday from 2 p.m., in addition to that of Mardyck (Flanders), according to the Ministry of Energy Transition.
Guest of France Inter on Monday, Mr. Martinez suggested to the government “to organize the distribution of fuel” and to “get around a table” with the unions to “discuss an increase in the Smic, a scale wage motive”.
Force Ouvrière, which had not participated in the previous day of interprofessional mobilization at the call of the CGT, on September 29, this time took the plunge.
“The requisition is unacceptable and it is never the right solution”, explained its secretary general Frédéric Souillot on Public Senate Monday.
Other reasons for dissatisfaction for millions of employees: inflation which weighs on purchasing power, the upcoming tightening of unemployment benefit rules, the pension reform expected for the end of the year.
Towards the renewable strike?
Union officials and the government will be particularly attentive on Tuesday to the number of strikers, particularly in strategic sectors – transport, energy, etc. – and to any calls for a renewable strike that they could decide, for example in the railway sector.
Railway workers can expect that the approach of the school holidays of All Saints encourages the management of the SNCF to negotiate.
But SNCF HRD François Nogué already warned on Monday that he was not considering accelerating the timetable for wage negotiations scheduled for January, but assures that a gesture could be made by granting the retroactivity of wage increases. in the last quarter of 2022.
This day will also be an opportunity to highlight less visible sectors, such as the food industry or the “forgotten Ségur” of the medico-social, according to Mr. Martinez.
If the day of September 29 had seen around “a million employees” stop work, Céline Verzeletti hopes this time “two or three times more”. “It will go up crescendo”, she wants to believe.
In the civil service, the strike notice covers the period from October 18 to 31, which she says is unusual.
The “March against expensive living” led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Sunday in Paris bodes well for the future, she thinks. The demonstration brought together 140,000 participants according to the organizers, 30,000 according to a police source and 29,500 according to a count by the firm Occurrence for a media collective, including AFP.
The former presidential candidate hailed a “tremendous success” and the emergence of a “new Popular Front”.
After having considered it, the CGT had decided not to participate in this March, saying it preferred demands on “salaries” rather than on “cost of living”.
10/17/2022 22:13:17 – Paris (AFP) – © 2022 AFP