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STRIKES

More than €1 million donated to striking workers in France

Donations to striking French transport workers have now topped the €1 million mark, the CGT union has announced.

Published: 27 December 2019 13:29 CET
More than €1 million donated to striking workers in France
Photo: AFP

Workers who strike in France are not paid, and receive no union funding, so instead unions organise cagnottes – collection pots – for donations to give to the striking workers.

The money is collected from members of the public and distributed to the workers. As well as serving a practical purpose, cagnottes can also be a useful tool in assessing the level of public support for strike action.

READ ALSO Here are the transport services running in France on December 27th

 

On Wednesday the CGT union – one of the more hardline unions and well represented among train drivers – announced that its cagnotte had topped the €1 million mark since being launched on the first day of the strikes on December 5th.

“This is concrete proof of the support of a large part of the population,” Marianne Ravaud, Deputy Secretary General of the union, told France Info.

“We receive cheques from all over France, from private sector employees, teachers and pensioners.” 

The money had been collected by a variety of the methods from traditional collection buckets outside the RATP headquarters in Paris to more high tech methods such as online collections and a donation stream from video game fans on the Twitch platform, which raised more than €100,000.

The money will be distributed to striking workers, including a €250,000 donation to employees of the Paris RATP transport network.

Since the start of the strike action, now entering its fourth week, public support has remained fairly consistent.

Before the action started around 60 percent of people said they supported the strikers. After two weeks that had fallen, but not by much and stood at around 54 percent.

READ ALSO EXPLAINED What level of support do striking workers enjoy in France?

Several other collections have also been organised by different unions across France.

Member comments

  1. The headline should read “just around €1 million donated to striking workers in France”. It should honestly signify how the local population in France are annoyed by the striking workers who are more privileged. The media should refrain from cresting a sense of “anarchism is great” attitude.

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

Published: 26 March 2024 09:55 CET
German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of €420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of €2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some €200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of €2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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