Amid the latest round of French rail strikes on Saturday and Sunday, the unions are replenishing their financial resources to try and make the industrial action last as long as possible, reports FRANCE 24.
Users of SNCF, France’s publicly owned railway monopoly, saw their weekends disrupted on April 28 and 29 in this year’s sixth wave of strikes. The industrial action has been going on since April 3, with strikes taking place two out of every five days – leading to nearly 100 million euros of losses for SNCF by mid-April.
The company’s striking workers have also lost out, since each day off work takes away a thirtieth of their gross monthly salary. The first of these deductions come in late April, but May’s losses will be the most difficult. With President Emmanuel Macron’s government vowing to stay the course, will the unions be able to hold out?
A kitty on the French crowdfunding site Leetchi was set up on March 23 by a group of public intellectuals led by sociologist Jean-Marc Salmon. Within a month, it racked up 927,000 euros of donations for railway workers, and it is still growing. “We’re very sympathetic towards the striking railway workers," the group told French TV news network Mediapart.
"They’re defending one of our common goods and it’s important to ensure that their movement can last – so we’ll support them financially."
Salmon and the unions have agreed on the best way to hand out the money: a collective of four unions will form an association to share the proceeds. “This way, no union will have a stranglehold on the pot of money,” said Fabien Dumas, a member of the board of the SUD union, in an interview with FRANCE 24.