Truck drivers, coach drivers, freight or fund carriers, ambulance drivers, movers, logistics employees such as at Amazon… This Monday from 3 a.m., the 790,000 employees of the road transport branch are called upon to block industrial areas in all of France.
Faced with soaring inflation, all the unions — CFDT, CGT, FO, CFTC, CGC — are launching this day of action to demand one or even two-digit wage increases in a sector where the grids struggling to reach the level of the minimum wage (1302.64 euros net).
“It is a warning shot that we want to send to employers, but also to the government and to public opinion.
We were considered essential employees during the Covid, but today we are the forgotten ones, and it cracks.
If this day of action is not enough, we will enter the hard in October”, warns Patrick Blaise of the FGTE Route CFDT, the first trade union in the profession.
A good twenty large sites should very quickly be blocked at dawn, according to the feedback collected this weekend by the unions.
Others could be targeted at the last minute.
"All regions will be affected but we don't want to bother motorists", still assures the leader of the CFDT truckers, who counts on more than 6,000 union members to block the identified areas and carry out towing operations.
Pell-mix, Paris, Marseille, Miramas, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Dunkirk, Rennes, Morlaix, Le Mans, Nantes, Lille, Nancy, Metz, Mulhouse, Lyon… At the very least, the whole of France will be covered.
Increases already swallowed up by inflation
The agreement resulting from the mandatory annual negotiations (NAO) last February - which does not cover all professions, such as logistics or transport of funds - certainly provides for a 5% increase in the remuneration of the conventional grids, to catch up with the level of the minimum wage, and an additional increase of 1% on May 1, 2022. Increases already engulfed by soaring prices (+ 5.5% in 2022 according to INSEE forecasts) and deemed clearly insufficient, hammer employee representatives - mostly paid at minimum wage - who denounce the policy of very small salary steps of employers and demand the resumption of discussions.
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“We can't go on like this, being paid with a slingshot, most of them at the minimum wage, with the exception of the long-haul truck drivers who are just above it!
storm Patrice Clos, from the FO transport union.
“It is the perverse effect of the Fillon reductions on low wages, which turn against employees.
In the NAO, employers refuse to grant increases worthy of the name to avoid losing these exemptions!
he continues.
“We are short of 80,000 employees, including 16,000 bus drivers and 8,000 school drivers at the start of the school year!
points out Patrick Blaise again.
For him, it is the result of poor management by employers and public authorities.
“By dint of pulling wages down and doing the least social, the profession no longer attracts.
»
Still no transport minister
Faced with this threat of social conflagration, Matignon nevertheless refutes any concern.
"Discussions between employers and employees must be held, in which the State is not directly involved", says one in the entourage of Elisabeth Borne.
And to recall that important measures to support the sector have already been taken: aid of 400 million euros to the sector, rebate of 15 cents / liter at the pump which benefits professionals...
Read alsoFuel surge: truckers get direct aid of 400 million euros
The looming threat is, however, the bane of all governments.
Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne is well placed to know: in 2017, she was called upon to put out the social fire that was smoldering in road transport, over overtime pay.
At the time, she was Minister of Transport.
Today, no official minister is in charge of this portfolio!
This will pose a problem this Tuesday, June 28, when a Council of European Ministers of Transport is being held in Lyon (Rhône).
"It is the Minister in charge of Territorial Communities, Christophe Béchu, who will be responsible for representing it
(France)
," rectifies Matignon.
Transport unions have also planned to invite themselves.
“We call on the truckers but also the railway workers to gather at 1 p.m. near the station.
There will also be people, ”warns Fabrice Michaud of the CGT truckers’ union.
