PARIS, 8 April 2018:
Air France grounded just under a third of flights yesterday as staff staged a walkout over pay, and travellers also braced for a fresh wave of train strikes – crippling much of France’s transport network.
The industrial action at France’s flag carrier – marking the fifth day of worker stoppages over the past month and a half – has began to overlap with nationwide rolling train strikes, as rail unions protest against president Emmanuel Macron’s reforms.
Air France had forecast that some 70% of flights would operate overnight.
Unions representing airline staff, locked in a dispute with Air France management over their request for a 6% pay rise, last week called four more strike days in April – in addition to stoppages planned for April 10 and 11.
Queues formed at Paris’ Roissy airport yesterday as stranded passengers sought to rebook flights.
“We wasted one day here,” said Harinath Reddy, an Indian software engineer whose connecting flight in Paris between Nuremberg in Germany and Mumbai was cancelled – causing him to miss another leg of his journey within India.
“If I have to book new ticket within a short time, it’s very expensive. And they are saying they cannot do anything about that. It’s totally ridiculous.”
Train strikes expected to last through to the early hours of Tuesday spelled more chaos for commuters and travellers at the beginning of some mid-term school holidays in France.
The rolling strikes, called in protest at Macron’s bid to modernise the state-run rail company SNCF – through a reform that would end job-for-life guarantees for workers – are set to last until June.
Some 35% of the workers needed for the network to run smoothly were expected to be absent today, SNCF officials said. That compares to a 48% absentee rate during strikes last Tuesday and Wednesday.
One in five high-speed TGV trains were set to run oday, while three out of four international Eurostar and Thalys routes would be operational, the SNCF said.
– Reuters