A bill to limit the right to strike in transport examined in the Senate

Necessary measures to “ensure continuity of service”, or “deliberate attacks on the right to strike”? A lively discussion opened between the left, fiercely opposed to the text, and the senatorial majority of the right and center, determined to pass it.

"Enough is too much. Our fellow citizens can't take it anymore," assured the head of the centrist senators Hervé Marseille, author of this bill tabled in February in the midst of the mobilization of SNCF controllers who had disrupted departures in holidays of at least 150.000 travelers. We must “reestablish a balance between the right to strike and continuity of service,” he added.

The text from the head of the UDI, largely expanded last week in committee at the initiative of the right, grants the government a quota of 30 days per year during which "staff of public transport services" would be deprived of their right strike, with a limit of 7 days in a row per blackout period.

These protected days would only concern certain periods: school holidays, public holidays, elections and referendums as well as events of “major importance”. And the ban on striking would be limited only to peak hours and to personnel essential to the operation of the service.

“Misused right”

“We are very attached to this fundamental right which is the right to strike, but it is clear that it is today being misused and used in an abusive manner,” says rapporteur Philippe Tabarot (Les Républicains).

The latter also proposes to extend the deadline for declaring strikers from 48 to 72 hours, to increase the "minimum level of service" during peak hours with a requisition process under strict conditions, as well as a system for the lapse of certain notices not followed up, to combat "dormant notices" which sometimes last for several months.

Another proposal from the senatorial right: require employees wishing to strike to join the movement from the start of their service and not during the day. A way to fight against "59-minute strikes", less costly for the employee but sources, according to the right, of great disorganization.

This debate was reopened during the February school holidays, in particular by the widely commented declaration of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who deplored a "form of habit" to strike during certain periods and affirmed that if "the strike is a right ", "working is a duty".

But the government has clarified that it will oppose this text, which risks complicating its inclusion on the agenda of the National Assembly, even if some members of the majority are in favor of it.

“There are two long-established popular rights that are in conflict: on the one hand the right to strike and on the other paid leave,” defended Renaissance MP Maud Bregeon on LCI, seeing in the proposal 'Hervé Marseille a way of "articulating" them rather than "opposing" them.

"Epidermal"

“There is a problem of constitutionality,” noted Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete. “We do not want to pit the French against each other, those who have the means to go on vacation against those who get up every morning to go to work,” he added, provoking boos from the right of the hemicycle.

The entire left also plans to oppose this text as a whole.

“It’s an epidermal text to wave a red rag before the Olympic Games,” alarms the socialist Olivier Jacquin, burned by the very heated debates that took place in committee last week.

“This text has only one use, it is to blow on the embers on the eve of the Olympics, in the context of tensions that we are experiencing in public transport”, despairs the ecologist Jacques Fernique.

Although the initial bill included the aviation sector, it was ultimately excluded.

In a press release, the CGT transports for its part castigated the "outpouring of populism" of the senatorial majority, accusing it of wanting to "better serve the interests of capital against those of agents and users of the public transport service".