Strike shuts stations’ loos

IF YOU’RE heading to the railway station in Paris, best make sure you’ve been to the loo before you leave the house.

Toilet attendants at Gare du Nord, Saint-Lazare, Austerlitz, Bercy du Nord and Marne-La-Vallée-Chessy stations are picketing the stations’ lavatories in a bid to protect their jobs after train operator SNCF decided to award the maintenance contract to a new supplier.

According to the strikers, the new firm - Dutch company 2theloo - has told existing employees they will have to reapply for their jobs, and it cannot guarantee that successful applicants will be taken on at the same level of seniority.

Baya Fatoumata, 53, who has worked at Gare du Nord since 1999, told Le Figaro: “We are all mothers. What do we do if we want to continue working? They’re throwing us away like old rags.”

Another striking “dames pipi”, Amel Moustapha, told France Bleu radio: “They have asked us to be bilingual in English.”

A spokesperson for 2theloo said: “We cannot take on people under exactly the same conditions as before, since we are not just a cleaning company.”

Unions have said they will challenge the new contracts in court, saying that employees’ service record must be taken into account by the new contract holder.

Photo: Chloé Diquéro / Twitter