All France Wants for Christmas Is a Train as Strikes Go On
All France Wants for Christmas Is a Train as Strikes Jam Travel
(Bloomberg) -- Forget presents. All French people want for Christmas is to be able to get on a train to visit family and friends.
It looks like Santa, or rather, labor unions won’t be delivering that anytime soon.
Strikes by transport workers against the government’s pension-reform plan have shut down half of national train services this weekend, with 59% expected to be cut on Dec. 23-24. France’s railway company, SNCF, said it suspended its unaccompanied minor service, canceling about 6,000 tickets for children who were planning to travel during the vacation.
Four out of five trains were suspended in the greater Paris region, while the capital’s metro system ground to a halt, with the exception of two automated lines.
French President Emmanuel Macron renewed calls for unions to agree a truce over the holiday period, while a new poll by Ifop for Le Journal du Dimanche (JDD) newspaper showed public approval of the movement had continued to decline to 51%.
“Strikes are protected by the constitution. But there are times in a nation’s history when it’s also good to know when to call a truce to respect families and family life,” Macron said on a trip to Ivory Coast this weekend, during which he visited troops stationed there.
Opposition Rising
Some 63% of French people wanted unions to call a halt to strikes during the holiday season, a Dec. 18 Elabe opinion survey showed. An OpinionWay poll on Thursday showed 55% of respondents said unions were “wrong” to keep striking during that period. While some unions are calling for a truce, others aren’t.
At the same time, opposition to Macron’s pension reform, a cornerstone of his presidential platform, has been rising. The Elabe poll showed that at 57%, more people reject the plan now than when protests started on Dec. 5. Some unions have called for a new day of demonstrations across the country on Jan. 9.
While Macron’s government has barreled through reforms of tax and labor laws, the current gridlock shows how deeply the French are wedded to their pension system. Macron wants to merge 42 separate regimes into a single universal points-based system. The plan also offers incentives to raise the age for full retirement benefits to 64 from 62.
Workers have been protesting proposed changes to one of Europe’s most complex and costly pension programs. The French government wants to phase out special retirement plans for sectors ranging from train conductors to dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet.
Le Parisien newspaper reported on Sunday that Macron will also give up his right under a 1955 law to a set pension for life granted to French presidents once they finish their mandate and will instead switch to a points-based calculation. He will also abandon the right to a post for life at France’s Constitutional Council, which brings with it 13,500 euros ($14,957) in compensation, the paper said.
Car Sharing
Support for the protests has remained strong even as the walkouts and demonstrations have created havoc for millions of workers commuting on public transportation -- mostly in and around Paris -- and led to hundreds of miles of traffic jams around the French capital.
Read more: French Opposition to Macron Pension Reforms Jumps to 57%: Poll
Car-sharing platforms such as French unicorn BlaBlaCar have seen a surge in reservations. Bookings have doubled since the start of the protests and have beaten records, the company told Bloomberg. Bookings have also doubled on its BlaBlaBus coach service, and it has added buses on lines such as Paris to Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
“We see a real solidarity of drivers, more people are offering seats than ever,” said Nicolas Brusson, chief executive officer of BlaBlaCar, told Bloomberg.
The company, created in 2006, will have 2 million seats available between Dec. 20 and Jan. 5, the equivalent of about 5,000 TGV high-speed trains, Brusson said.
Unions Divided
SNCF has called on travelers to change their tickets but pledged it will seek to make sure the main lines and the most demanded ones will run on Dec. 23-24.
Union leaders met with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on Wednesday and Thursday, with several of them saying talks failed to advance and signaling that they planned to continue protests.
The government will present a timetable for consultation on the reforms on Monday, with meetings expected to start at the beginning of January, new pensions chief Laurent Pietraszewski told the JDD newspaper in an interview published on Sunday. The Ifop poll showed 69% of those surveyed expect the government will push through the reforms without caving in to the protests, down three points.
The hard-line CGT and some other unions have called for further strikes and demonstrations through the end of the year unless Macron withdraws his plan. One of France’s more moderate unions, the CFDT, has called for a Christmas truce.
“Everyone should be able to travel freely to do what they need to do during the holiday season,” Laurent Berger, the leader of the CFDT, said on France Inter radio on Friday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net;James Regan in Paris at jregan65@bloomberg.net;William Horobin in Paris at whorobin@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Geraldine Amiel at gamiel@bloomberg.net, Vidya Root, Anil Varma
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