May 8th Bridge: SNCF expects almost normal traffic this Sunday, the last day of the strike

Good news for travelers who took advantage of the May 8th long weekend to get away. SNCF is predicting minor disruptions this Sunday, affecting more than nine out of ten TGV trains in France.

In addition, the The company does not anticipate any disruption to the Transilien (Parisian suburban trains), the TER (regional trains) and the Intercités (regional trains). "They ran normally on Saturday. We expect the same thing this Sunday." The same goes for the TGV, which ran at 96% capacity on Saturday.

For the last day of the controllers' strike, according to the Sud-Rail union, the strikers' mobilization, "very strong" on Saturday, should "drop a little on Sunday."

"On Saturday, TGV ticket inspectors were over 60% on strike, with peaks in the Southeast at over 66%. And we're at around 50% on TER trains," according to Fabien Villedieu of Sud-Rail. This union and a collective of ticket inspectors called the Collectif national ASCT (CNA) have called for strikes on May 9, 10, and 11 to demand an increase in their work bonus and better anticipation of schedules, which they say are too often changed at the last minute.

Despite this mobilization, the SNCF had stated that all passengers would be able to "travel on the scheduled day to their destination." Indeed, most trains are able to run thanks to the deployment of volunteers, company managers , who received special one-day training to replace the striking train controllers.

For Sud-Rail, this is not enough to explain the low traffic disruptions: " The SNCF sought to make the strike invisible , by imposing a degraded transport plan, with single TGV units of 500 people instead of the usual double trains during peak periods, which require more controllers," explains Fabien Villedieu.

At the beginning of May, SNCF Voyageurs CEO Christophe Fanichet indicated that he had "already had thousands of fewer reservations for the May 8th bank holiday" in anticipation of the strike. Claiming to have "given social dialogue every chance" with "more than 35 meetings," he pledged to "provide clarity on the weekly rest periods for TGV train managers, at six months instead of three," but ruled out a pay increase.

Sud-Rail is expected to provide an update "early next week" on the possible follow-up to the strike. Earlier this week, a drivers' strike called by the CGT-Cheminots (French National Railways), the main union at the SNCF, caused disruptions on regional lines in several regions such as Hauts-de-France and Île-de-France. According to SNCF Voyageurs, "approximately nine out of ten TER trains will have been running in France (during this strike), and approximately eight out of ten Transilien trains, with disparities depending on the region or line."

The CGT-Cheminots union has already planned a continuation of the mobilization: it has called for a strike on June 4 for drivers, on the sidelines of a round table devoted to the bonus they receive, on June 5 for all categories of railway workers, with demands relating to salaries or the improvement of working conditions, and on June 11 for controllers.