Holiday departures and returns should be normal… or almost.
The SNCF switchers' strike planned for next Friday and Saturday should have little impact on train traffic, which should be "almost normal", a source close to the matter assured Tuesday.
“The information available to date suggests almost normal traffic next weekend, with possibly some localized disruptions,” she said.
The switchers, responsible for regulating traffic on the network, are called to stop work by Sud-Rail on Friday February 23 and Saturday February 24, a week after a very successful controllers' strike, which led to the cancellation of a train out of two on the main lines.
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These dates have the particularity of being common to the three school holiday zones A, B and C. “It is the
maxi-crossover
of the winter holidays”, indicates Sud-Rail, for which “the possibilities for the box of making our action invisible are limited.”
For the increase of a premium
Switchers are called to mobilize to demand “a real massive hiring plan”, an “increase in the operational circulation bonus” to 300 euros compared to 60 euros currently and questions of work organization with more predictable schedules, according to Julien Troccaz, Sud-Rail federal secretary.
According to him, “the mobilization is likely to be significant in the Alps, the Paris region or New Aquitaine”.
As for SNCF Réseau, the infrastructure manager, we assure you that the company has made recruitment efforts in recent years, going from 508 hires in 2020 to 654 in 2022, then 902 in 2023.
During the last switchers' strike in December 2022, around fifty TGVs out of 1,300 were canceled during the first weekend of the Christmas holidays.