Trends In France. How to understand that the CGT and SUD have called to switch out the 6 and 7 July, and again, nationally or locally, on the 19th of July, and promise to continue the movement ? The law on the railways has been passed and ratified. Of course, there are still essential steps and particularly the negotiation of the new collective agreement, but overall the long sequence of 36 days of strike action in spring and early summer has only marginally moved the lines, and the negotiations should be spread over many months. Hence the denunciation of strikes, which would now be ” political “.
We can, however, propose a different reading of the form taken by this social conflict. With the law of railway, we switch in a new world of rail where rule of private actors and the SNCF, but where it will act more as today, as a private company rather than as a public service. What can be the strategy of the union in such a context ? Become (more) corporate and… ” innovate “.
Instead of crossing the Rhine, where there is always some form of contractualisation of social relations, take the tunnel under the English Channel to find there also a rail system to the theater of the clash between private companies, some of which have also swept tomorrow on the French network : Arriva, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Bahn ; Keolis, subsidiary of SNCF…
Two years of training
What do we see ? At the initiative of the first union of british rail – the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) – strikes have taken place may 9, June 16 and 24, in the Greater Anglia Rail ; the 9, 24, and 26 may, 19, 21, 23 June at Northern Rail ; 9, 11, 14, 16 and 18 may at South Western Railway – the mediation of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service has avoided in extremis three additional days in June… The list of overrides…
