Transport: the Senate adopts a text limiting strikes during certain periods, such as school holidays

School holidays, public holidays... Against the advice of the government, the Senate adopted on Tuesday a bill to limit strikes in transport during certain periods, sparking a very abrasive debate a few months before the Olympic Games. Necessary measures to “ensure continuity of service”, or “deliberate attacks on the right to strike”? The divisions were revived between the left, fiercely opposed to the text, and the senatorial majority of the right and the center, unsurprisingly managed to have it adopted by 211 votes against 112.

"Enough is enough. Our fellow citizens can't take it anymore,” launched the head of the centrist senators Hervé Marseille, author of this bill tabled in February, when at least 150,000 travelers had seen their departure on vacation disrupted by a mobilization of controllers of the SNCF. “Faced with excesses”, we must “reestablish a balance between the right to strike and continuity of service”, he added.

The text from the head of the UDI grants the government a quota of 30 days per year during which “public transport service personnel” – except the airline sector – would be deprived of their right to strike, with a limit of 7 days. 'affiliated by blackout period. These protected days would only concern certain periods: school holidays, public holidays, elections and referendums as well as events of “major importance”, such as the Olympic Games. And the ban on striking would be limited only to peak hours and to personnel essential to the operation of the service.

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“We say yes to the right to strike but no to the absolute blockade of an entire country,” said rapporteur Philippe Tabarot (Les Républicains). “It is not possible, during the Olympic Games, to take hostage thousands of French people who sacrificed themselves to buy tickets to attend the competitions,” justified his colleague Michel Savin, while several unions are threatening to mobilize during this period.

The text also plans 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 measure voted on: that which requires 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”.

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But Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete ultimately opposed the text, questioning its conformity with the Constitution and refusing to "pit the French against each other, those who have the means to go on vacation against those who get up every day." mornings to go to work. This position risks complicating the chances of the text being included in the National Assembly in the short term. Some members of the presidential majority nevertheless voted for it, such as the Horizons senators who mostly sit in the Independents group, or their MoDem colleagues, affiliated with the centrist group. The Macronist group (RDPI) abstained.

The entire left opposed this text as a whole, without success. “Three months before the Olympics, it is a provocation which risks igniting the powder in a context of serious social crisis,” worried the communist Marie-Claude Varaillas. “The senatorial majority is trying to reappropriate the right to vacation in the name of the general interest,” added the socialist Olivier Jacquin, his ecologist colleague Guillaume Gontard denouncing for his part “a text which is clearly based on our Constitution and our history". In recent days, the CGT transports had also castigated the “outpouring of populism” of the senatorial majority, accusing it of wanting to “better serve the interests of capital”.