Strike notices are piling up as the Paris Olympic Games approach. After the civil servants, it is the railway workers who are called to hit the streets on May 21, at the call of most of the local sections of Sud-Rail and the CGT, joined in places by the local sections of Unsa-Railway. The objective? Increase pressure on SNCF management, in light of negotiations on the amount of bonuses paid to employees during the Olympics period.
At the end of April, RATP drivers finally won their case, with the validation of an agreement providing bonuses of up to 1,600 euros for employees absent for less than four days during the duration of the games.
In a press release called “Contempt 2024”, Sud Rail considers the bonus decided by the management of the SNCF too low: 50 euros gross per day of presence this summer. “Crumbs,” shouts the union organization, which is demanding a doubling of the net bonus, rest included. “We decided to shake the coconut palm by placing a date in the landscape,” Fabien Villedieu of Sud-Rail told AFP, confirming information revealed on Wednesday by RMC. “What is put on the table does not suit us,” stressed Fabien Villedieu. “A fixed bonus would suit us, at least 1,000 euros,” he indicated, as is the case for example at the RATP.
On the side of the CFDT-Cheminots, “we have not given a word to go there”, declared its general secretary Thomas Cavel. “We have negotiations to carry out, strike movements come when the negotiations do not succeed,” he said.
The SNCF, for its part, refuses to comment on the content of the current negotiations and recalls that CEO Jean-Pierre Farandou plans to reach an agreement on the subject at the end of May or the beginning of June.
Salary increases, revaluation of the index point…
The Paris garbage collectors already want to go further. The various unions are threatening to strike during the period of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. A strike notice, running from May 14 to 16, from May 22 to 24 and from July 1 to September 8, was filed by the CGT yesterday. The union organization is asking for a bonus of 1,900 euros, backed by an increase of 400 euros in monthly remuneration for all staff.
And the complaints don’t stop there. The agents, responsible for cleaning the streets of the capital, are demanding a salary increase of 300 euros as well as an increase in the index point which allows their remuneration to be calculated.
“We have no intention of spoiling these Olympics. It is a lever of pressure, but if there is pressure, it is because politics does not meet the demands of employees,” defended Christophe Farinet , general secretary of the CGT FTD NEEA at the microphone of RMC. “If the Parisian executive hears and negotiates with the CGT, there will be no problem,” he added.
Towards a strike of public employees during the Olympics?
On April 10, the CGT announced that it had filed strike notices in the three branches of the civil service running from April 15 to September 15 and which will therefore cover the period of the Olympic Games (July 26-August 11) and Paralympic Games (28 August-September 8). Among the complaints: “long-term recruitment, salary compensation for professional constraints generated by the Games” or even “rights to leave, chosen teleworking and disconnection”.
On Franceinfo, Saturday April 27, the Minister of Civil Service, Stanislas Guerini, said he did not believe in a strike during the Olympics period. There will be, moreover, “many public agents who will sometimes be ahead of the Olympic Games, mobilized, for example, to issue visas, because there is an increase in activity in our services […]. The public service will be extraordinarily mobilized,” the minister pledges. This, even though the first public service union has assured that there will be “no Olympic truce.”