French workers begin strike

Agitation to go on for three months, testing Macron’s resolve to bring in reforms

No sweeping changes: French students in Lille demonstrating with striking railway employees on Monday.

Commuters across France faced severe disruptions on Tuesday as rail workers launched three months of rolling strikes, a major test of President Emmanuel Macron’s resolve to reshape the country through sweeping reforms.

More than three-quarters of train drivers joined the first day of the walkout, according to the SNCF, the heavily indebted state rail operator which Mr. Macron wants to overhaul. But overall only a third of staff were on strike, the company said. Only one in eight high-speed TGV trains and a fifth of regional trains were running on what French media have dubbed “black Tuesday”.

4.5 million passengers

And with stoppages planned two days out of five until June 28, weeks of disruption lie ahead for France’s 4.5 million daily train passengers. “We have been asking for the same thing for several weeks — that the government completely reconsider its plan. They need to start again from scratch,” Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT trade union, told France Inter radio.

Staff at Air France, garbage collectors and some energy workers were also staging separate walkouts on Tuesday.

Public support for the rail strike stands at just below half, according to an Ifop poll released on Sunday.

As commuters took to the roads instead, the streets of Paris were snarled with an “exceptional” 370 km of traffic jams during the morning rush hour before easing, according to traffic website Sytadin.

At the capital’s busy Gare du Lyon station, the platforms were so crammed that a woman fell onto the tracks and had to be helped out by fellow passengers.

Mr. Macron says the SNCF, saddled with €46.6 billion ($57.5 billion) of debt, needs to drastically improve its efficiency and cut running costs as EU countries prepare to open passenger rail to competition by 2020.

His government is planning to stop granting the rail workers’ special status — which guarantees jobs for life and early retirement — to new SNCF hires entering the company. It also wants to combine the three bodies that make up the SNCF into a single state-owned company, prompting fears among unions that it could be a step towards privatising the rail operator.