Rail unions call for Wednesday station staff strike in Ile-de-France

Several rail unions in France have called for strike action on Wednesday (December 1) at stations around Ile-de-France to protest against working conditions and the “dehumanisation” of stations.

CGT-Cheminots, SUD-Rail and FO-Cheminots are calling on ticket office and station staff across the Transilien network to strike.

Transilien is the name given to the commuter rail network serving Île-de-France, including Paris and the area around the city.

The network consists of eight lines: H, J, K, L, N, U, P and R, each operated by SNCF, the state-owned railway of France.

Two other unions, Unsa ferroviaire and CFDT-Cheminots, are also joining the call to strike, but only in the Paris-Nord sector (suburban trains departing from the Gare du Nord in Paris), BFMTV reports.

Station employees are “all under attack”, Sud-Rail, Unsa and CFDT wrote in a joint leaflet protesting against the scrapping of 40 jobs on line H and “around 20” on RER B.

They criticise the “understaffing” of stations that mean workers have “more work” and must be “more flexible”, while the closing of ticket and information counters late at night and on Sundays means less opportunities for bonus pay.

The unions are calling for higher salaries for station staff, and to keep ticket and information offices open.

The unions say that stations have been “dehumanised” due to having less staff and more self-service options and say that staff are now required to be “ultrapolyvalent”, meaning extremely versatile.

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