Union-less strike wreaks havoc before Christmas
A collective of controllers born on Facebook targets this holiday weekend to stop work. Is this the birth of a “yellow vests” version of social movements?
The Gare de Lyon, in Paris, during the first strike of the controllers, on December 2. This Christmas weekend, more than half (59%) of the seventeen daily connections with Switzerland will be cut.
STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN /AFP
Above José’s head, an SNCF poster proudly proclaims: “The journey begins here”. But for José and his wife, it is rather the queue that begins. They came to be reimbursed for the Paris-Lausanne tickets they had bought three weeks ago for this Saturday. “We are lucky, we found a train later in the morning, but twice as expensive.” Yet José is not angry with the strikers: “Everyone is trying to earn a little more because of the drop in purchasing power. They’re right.”