TRANSPORT delays and cancellations should be expected across France due to today's national strike.
A statement by the Direction générale de l'aviation civile (DGAC) said disruption was expected across the country and advised passengers to check with their airline for flights occurring today and Friday.
A spokesman for Air France said the company would run 100% of long haul flights, all of its short and medium haul flights from Paris Charles de Gaulle and 70% of medium-haul flights from Paris Orly.
Public transports unions in 90 towns in France have called for strikes but the length of walkouts could vary between 55 mins (the maximum to not lose half a day’s wage) and 24 hours.
These include: Abbeville, Aix-les-Bains, Angers, Angoulême, Annecy, Annemasse, Annonay, Arles, Arras, Aurillac, Avignon, Bayonne, Belfort, Besançon, Béziers, Blois, Bordeaux, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bourg-en-Bresse, Bourges, Brest, Caen, Cannes, Chalon-sur-Saône, Chambéry, Charleville-Mézières, Châteauroux, Cherbourg, Clermont-Ferrand, Creil, Creusot/Montceau-les-Mines, Dieppe, Dijon, Douai, Dunkerque, Elbeuf, Epinal, Flers, Forbach, Grenoble, L'Isle d'Abeau, Laval, Lens, Lille, Limoges, Lorient, Lyon, Le Mans, Maubeuge, Mont-de-Marsan, Montargis, Montbéliard, Montélimar, Montluçon, Montpellier, Morlaix, Mulhouse, Nancy, Nantes, Nice, Nîmes, Orléans, Pau, Périgueux, Poitiers, Pontarlier, Puy-en-Velay, Quimper, Reims, Rennes, Roanne, La Rochelle, La Roche-sur-Yon, Rouen, Saint-Brieuc, Saint-Etienne, Saint-Malo, Saint-Nazaire, Saintes, Saumur, Strasbourg, Tarbes, Thionville, Toulon, Toulouse, Tours, Vannes, Versailles, Vichy and Vierzon.
The SNCF expects 60% of TGVs to run, 40% of regional TER services and 50% of Transiliens.
Around 35% of Intercity Corail services will run.
Services on international lines Eurostar, Thalys, Alleo are expected to be normal.
Trains running between Paris-Lausanne, Paris-Berne and Paris-Genève will have 60% service and 35% between Paris and Milan.
More details are available on www.infolignes.com
Schools, public transport, banks and La Poste are among services affected by the strikes.
Unions are calling for the 5.2 million public sector workers in France to join the movement on Thursday, calling for “a halt to the blind politics of redundancies and imposing an immediate moratorium on those contained in the 2009 budget.”
They want to equal the turn out of the last national strike of January 29.
Teachers will be striking over proposed job cuts (13,200 planned in 2009 in schools, colleges and lycées, and 900 in higher education and research) and over reforms put forward by the government.
Paris
Parents in Paris have been asked not to send their children to school despite the application of the minimum service.
The Metro and bus services will also be affected with four of the eight unions calling for workers to join the strikes – compared to six on January 29.
La Poste, France Télécom and energy sector works including EDF and GDF-Suez will also go on strike.
In the private sector, banks, journalists and workers for commercial giants such as Auchan and Carrefour are among those called on to join in the protest.
Unions CGT and CFDT representing oil company Total will be demonstrating over 555 job cuts after a record profit of €13.9 million was announced for 2008.
It follows the previous strike on January 29 – labelled Black Thursday - where between 1.1 million and 2.5 million people took to the streets calling for the government to take “urgent measures” in the face of the economic crisis.
