Two days after the march against the high cost of living and climate inaction which brought together 140,000 demonstrators according to the organizers, 30,000 according to the police, several unions including the CGT – on the front line in the social conflict of the refineries – FO, FSU and Solidarity, and four movements representing youth (FIDL, MNL, UNEF, Voix lycéenne) are calling on employees from all sectors to strike and demonstrate on Tuesday 18 October. The goal: to demand an increase in wages and show its support for the right to strike following the requisitions of refineries carried out by the government to facilitate the distribution of fuel.
Other reasons for dissatisfaction for millions of employees: inflation, which weighs on purchasing power, the upcoming tightening of unemployment compensation rules or the pension reform, expected for the end of the year. Railway workers, civil servants, employees in nuclear power plants… Several sectors in difficulty have joined the national mobilization movement. Several sectors will be disrupted.
At the SNCF, the CGT-Cheminots, the first representative union, and SUD-Rail have called for mobilization. The circulation of regional trains will be disrupted, with one out of two TER and Intercités trains on average, as well as on the Ile-de-France networks for this day of interprofessional strike which will only marginally affect TGV traffic and almost not the Paris metro, announced Monday the SNCF and the RATP. In the Paris region, traffic will be normal on certain SNCF lines (K, T11, T13) but severely disrupted on others (1 train out of three for the RER D and lines J, L and R of the Transilien). SNCF plans to run only one out of two trains on lines B and C of the RER, H and N of the Transilien, and three out of four on the RER A and line P.
In Paris, bus traffic (RATP) will also be disrupted with two out of three buses on average. Three out of four RERs will operate on the portions of lines A and B operated by RATP.
The Minister Delegate for Transport, Clément Beaune, calls on the French to “anticipate” their trips. Union officials and the government will be particularly attentive to the number of strikers, particularly in the strategic transport sector, as well as to any calls for a renewable strike. The railway workers hope that the approach of the school holidays of All Saints pushes the direction of the SNCF to the negotiation.
Finally, truck drivers could also massively disengage this Tuesday, at the call of the CGT transport federation. “The employees of the road transport of goods and, more particularly those who contribute to transporting dangerous materials, are in solidarity with the fight in progress”, indicated the federation, calling on its militants “to inflate the pickets”.
Notices have also been filed for the three sides of the public service (State, territorial and hospital). The Federation of Public Services called for a strike “to support the actions decided by the strikers in the refineries, to reaffirm our wage demands (10% immediate increase in the point), our rejection of the pension reform wanted by Macron and our attachment to the right to strike and trade union freedoms”.
In several large cities such as Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), Bordeaux (Gironde), Rouen (Seine-Maritime) or Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), the strike should be “massively” followed by garbage collectors. Other territorial officials are also expected to stop work. “In view of the first elements that go back to us, there could be many strikers among the road workers, the technical but also administrative services or even the agents of the libraries and those of the HLM offices, reports to the Parisian François Livartowski, of the CGT civil service. The movement is quite widespread in the administration.”
What about teachers? The strikers have until Monday evening to declare themselves. The unions already assure that they will be numerous in the vocational high schools, where the movement was programmed for a long time because of the reform which concerns them.
The employees in the refineries continue the strike this Monday in five sites of TotalEnergies and will continue Tuesday, in spite of the remonstrances of Bruno Le Maire this morning on BFMTV and the agreement on wages signed Friday between the company, the CFE-CGC and the CFDT, the majority unions. Two depots, that of Mardyck (Flanders), as well as that of Feyzin (Rhône), were requisitioned by the government.
In addition to the fuel sector, points of tension have appeared in nuclear power plants. For the past few weeks, work stoppages, against a backdrop of wage demands and taking inflation into account, have disrupted the activity of several power stations, in Tricastin (Drôme), Cruas (Ardèche), Bugey (Ain), Cattenom ( Moselle) and Gravelines (North). The strike movement continues to grow, EDF has had to postpone the restart of five nuclear reactors.
Social movements can “have an impact on the schedule for the return to production of certain reactors, a spokeswoman for the group told AFP. For reactors in production, this can result in temporary power cuts”.
