After a few days of confusion, the unions do not call for the strike, but allow unsatisfied controllers to maintain their threatening to disengage for Christmas and New Year weekends, during which disorders are to be feared.
by Sophie Fay
In Paris-Metz, this Monday in December, the two controllers are exasperated. The same morning, colleagues tried to convince them not to strike at Christmas or New Year. But they do not want to hear anything, injured by the way they feel treated by the management of the SNCF. And sometimes, also, by other business professions. “The drivers get what they want when they go on strike. Not us. So we will not let go,” explain the two agents, who each display twenty-three years of house.
The ASCT – Actors of the Commercial Train service -, the official name of the controllers, which are also called managers, are many to be on the same line. They have been asking for the company for months to recognize that they are not “sedentary” but “rolling” employees and that, therefore, the premiums they touch on each trip or when they sleep far from their home due to service are partly integrated into their salary, to smooth the variations.
“My gross salary is 2,250 euros but, with bonuses, I earn 3,200 euros net for some months”, explains Franck, thirty-four years of trade, crossed in the TGV Paris-La Rochelle. The gross is less than 2000 euros for a controller with around twenty years of seniority, the net climbing at 2,800 euros with the variable elements. Premiums that disappear during the holidays, training, maternity leave, sick leave and, above all, retirement.
a truce?
To improve this situation, discussions have been underway with management since November. In addition to the increases and bonuses from salary negotiations for the whole SNCF, the company took steps in the direction of the controllers by improving the progress of their career (“we could remain blocked fourteen years on the same level,” explains Franck ), by proposing them to redirect themselves to another profession if they wish and by increasing their bonus of chief of board by 600 euros gross per year, which will be partially integrated into their salary in 2024.
“Why in 2024?” Warm Catherine and Jennifer in Paris-Metz. “We have already done a weekend of strike and it’s been a month and a half that we negotiate, all that to obtain 38.50 euros per month, it does not pass,” sighs Nicolas, one of the pillars of the National ASCT collective (CNA), which centralizes the claims.
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