senators will vote to restrict the right to strike during vacations, despite government opposition

The government will oppose it, believing that it is not constitutional, but senators intend to vote Tuesday afternoon to restrict the right to strike during vacation periods on trains.

Tuesday, April 9 in the afternoon in the Senate, the Minister of Transport, Patrice Vergriete, will oppose, on behalf of the government, the bill which aims to protect 30 days per year without strikes on trains during working hours. peak, whether for vacation departures, public holidays, election weekends or other major sporting events.

A government veto which displeases the senator at the origin of the text, the boss of the centrist group Hervé Marseille. Hervé Marseille, who is also president of the UDI, may well have made an alliance with the presidential majority for the European elections, but he regrets not having even received a phone call from the minister to discuss it. The Senate, with a right-wing majority, is not disarming and intends to vote for this law, against the advice of the executive.

“The fear of the unions just before the Olympics”

The government is against it, and yet we heard from ministers who did not seem hostile to the regulation of the right to strike. The senators heard them too. The LR rapporteur of the text, Philippe Tabarot, recalls that the Prime Minister had, certainly, defended the right to strike, but also spoke of “duty to work”. It was at the time of the last strike by SNCF controllers, during the February holidays. Other members of the government had also judged that it was not “not acceptable to take the French hostage during their vacation”, or pleaded for a real minimum service. Today, senators are accusing the government of having “the fear of the unions just before the Olympics”. “Nothing to see, defends the Ministry of Transport, we think that it is not constitutional and we do not see why favor the French who go on vacation and not those who use the train to go to work”.

But with government opposition, the measure has no chance of coming into force. The senators will be blocked. “The government will manage the next strike!”provokes one of them, while hoping that in the Assembly a friendly group will end up taking up the proposal. “It will change one day or anotherwants to believe an elected official, because the French and transport operators can’t take it anymore”. It is not written, because the LR senators had already adopted a similar text in 2020, but which was never taken up in the Assembly, not even after Christmas 2022 when 200,000 travelers were deprived of trains. An executive advisor quips: “Everyone is afraid of unions!”