Boss promises trains will run

SNCF BOSS Guillaume Pépy has promised "every train will be running during the festive season" after a drivers' union called weekend strikes.

Pépy said that if the strike was to go ahead - and he didn't think it would - then passengers would feel "that they had been taken hostage". He added: "They wouldn't be entirely wrong."

Rail union FGAAC-CFDT, a minority union for drivers, called the strike for the remaining weekends of the year to protest over new timetables coming into force on December 11 - when 85% of the train times across France will change - and changes to working conditions which will hit their 13th month pay.

However, the strike call was attacked by another union, CGT Cheminots, as a way to "stigmatise SNCF staff and destroy the company's public image".

Speaking to journalists from Europe 1-iTélé-Le Parisien, Pépy said that the FGAAC-CFDT demands were unfair on other rail workers.

He added that next weekend's new timetables marked a major change for SNCF which is also set to enter a new period financially. The new timetables will affect 15,000 trains and introduce more regular services.

The group announced it will post results "significantly in the black" - after a loss of €980 million in 2009 and a profit of €697m in 2010 - and Pépy said it would pay dividends to the state and to employees. The first nine months of 2011 had seen SNCF's business grow by 7.1% to €24.19 billion, although the economic slowdown has hit freight business.

It has 235,000 employees but will take on 10,000 new staff in 2012; an increase of 1,000 on figures previously announced. In all, 4,500 of these will be rail workers.

Get details of the new timetables here for inter-city and TER trains and here for Ile-de-France services.