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TRAVEL NEWS

Eurotunnel strike latest: How long will the Channel Tunnel be disrupted for?

Unions representing Channel Tunnel workers have ended the wildcat strike that caused massive travel disruption on Thursday - but how long are services likely to be disrupted and what's the situation for rebooking?

Published: 21 December 2023 16:44 CET
Updated: 22 December 2023 09:29 CET
Eurotunnel strike latest: How long will the Channel Tunnel be disrupted for?
Passengers gather at the Eurostar International Departures hall at St Pancras station in London on December 21, 2023, as services are disrupted due to a strike at the Eurotunnel. Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS / AFP

The Channel Tunnel was completely closed on Thursday afternoon and evening after a wildcat strike by unions representing French workers at Getlink, the Tunnel operator.

At 7.30pm on Thursday unions announced the strike was over – apparently after negotiating a deal with bosses over end-of year bonuses.

“The crisis Eurotunnel industrial action is coming to an end… Channel tunnel activity will resume this evening,” said union delegate Franck Herent, citing negotiations with management that “bore results that satisfy us”.

So when are services likely to return to normal?

The strike was by staff employed at Getlink, which operates the Channel Tunnel – which means that all traffic using the tunnel was affected – Eurostar services, as well as Le Shuttle trains which carry vehicles and freight.

Unions met with bosses at 4.30pm on Thursday, at 6pm unions said they were “waiting for the management to get back to them with a serious offer” and by 7.30pm the strike was over.

According to French MP Alexandre Holroyd, France’s transport minister Clément Beaune personally intervened to help reach an agreement.

But thousands of journeys had already been disrupted.

Eurostar services between London and Paris but also London and Brussels and Amsterdam were also affected, as well as Shuttle car services.

Passengers at Gare du Nord and St Pancras stations reported a chaotic situation with little information. 

When will services resume?

Le Shuttle operators resumed services later on Thursday evening and night-time trains ran as normal.

However Eurostar had already cancelled its final services of the evening, so Eurostar resumes services on Friday. Eurostar says that it “anticipates normal service” on Friday, so people with prebooked Friday trains should travel to the station as normal.

What about rebooking?

For those whose journey has already been cancelled, rebooking options are limited by the fact that the Christmas travel period is already a very busy time.

Eurostar had already told passengers that it may not be possible to rebook them before Christmas, as many services on Friday and Saturday were booked out.

The company will add six extra services over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in order to take people whose Thursday journey was disrupted. In total 30 services were cancelled on Thursday, so it’s unlikely that everyone will be able to secure a place on the extra trains. 

Le Shuttle usually has more flexibility and can load people onto the next available crossing – although long waits are still possible.

Cross-Channel ferry services still have tickets available.

France-UK Christmas travel – what are my options?

Both UK and French schools break up for the holidays on Friday, so Friday evening and Saturday were already expected to be some of the busiest travel days of the year.

How could they do this just before Christmas?

That’s kind of the point – French unions frequently call strikes for peak travel periods that cause maximum inconvenience, hoping that the additional pressure will cause bosses to cave in to their demands.

According to Getlink, “trade unions rejected a bonus of €1,000 end-of-year bonus announced by management and have called for a strike to demand it be tripled.”

The six unions representing Getlink staff said they had been warning bosses for months about “the terrible deterioration in the social climate” and called on them to share the wealth. 

Getlink in July recorded “historic” operating profits of €159 million – a 218 percent increase.

In the end, an agreement was reached relatively quickly, although not before thousands of people faced disrupted Christmas travel plans. 

“We’ve been sitting here at Calais for 3.5 hours,” said one Twitter uses named Andrew. “Totally shitty way to do industrial action by Eurotunnel staff. You can put pressure on your employer without screwing over families stuck in cars, trying to get home for Christmas without any warning.”

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Member comments

  2. Showing once more that well organised unions are the only way to stand up to unreasonable employers.
    Well done!

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For members

ELECTIONS

French election breakdown: Party alliances and the Ciotti soap opera

Five days into campaigning for the snap parliamentary elections in France, here's our latest election breakdown bringing you up to date with the latest - from the party alliances and deals to the high farce at the party HQ of Les Républicains.

Published: 14 June 2024 09:12 CEST
French election breakdown: Party alliances and the Ciotti soap opera

During the election period we will be publishing a bi-weekly ‘election breakdown’ to help you keep up with all the latest developments. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

It’s now five days since French president Emmanuel Macron’s surprise election announcement and right now, it’s all about alliances – namely which parties will succeed in making electoral pacts. And attempts to form these alliances have produced the funniest and most dramatic moments so far.

The end of Eric?

First up was Eric Ciotti, leader of the right-wing Les Républiains party, who announced an alliance with Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National. However, party bigwigs (this is the former party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy) were horrified by his deal and immediately attempted to expel him.

Farce ensued with Ciotti locking the doors of the party Paris HQ, party bosses holding a meeting to expel him anyway, Ciotti refusing to accept their verdict and announcing a legal challenge, then posting a video of himself arriving at the office the following morning insisting that he was still in charge.

Cue a veritable tsunami of jokes and social media memes as most of France grabbed some popcorn and settled down to watch the drama. 

Family drama

Also having some internal issues is Reconquête, the party founded by right-wing polemicist Eric Zemmour in 2022 whose platform was, basically, that Le Pen was no longer far right enough.

They gained five MEPs at the European elections, but within 48 hours Zemmour had expelled four of them from the party after they attempted to form an alliance with RN. Among those he branded “traitors” was the party’s lead candidate Marion Maréchal, niece of Marine Le Pen who very publicly broke with her aunt in 2022 to join Zemmour.

Zemmour himself went on TV to talk through his feelings of betrayal. 

Popular for some 

Over on the left of the political spectrum things have been – most uncharacteristically – calmer and more cordial. The four biggest parties on the left (the hard-left La France Insoumise, the centre-left Parti Socialiste, the Greens EELV, and the Communist Party) have concluded an election pact not to stand candidates against each other.

The deal will see 229 LFI candidates, 170 PS candidates, 92 Greens and 50 Communists.

However the solidarity of the ‘Front populaire’ could soon splinter as they continue to discuss the hypothetical question of who they would nominate as prime minister, should they gain an absolute majority in parliament.

Three-way split

So it looks like the elections will be – as they were in 2022 – largely fought on a three-way split; the combined parties of the left; the far-right with a few allies and the centrist bloc made up of Macronists plus the two smaller centrist parties (MoDem and Horizons).

What next?

Candidates have until the end of Friday to submit their papers and the next big date is Saturday, when towns and cities all over France will hold demos protesting against the rise of the far-right – find the full list here.

While politicians across the spectrum continue to snipe at each other and jostle for position, many people across the country are simply appalled at the prospect of the far-right in power in France, and thousands of them are expected to take to the streets over the weekend to show their feelings.

READ ALSO What a far-right prime minister could mean for foreigners in France

Then, on Monday, the campaign proper begins – parties that not already done so will need to produce a manifesto and the conversation will likely move away from the amusing soap opera of alliance-building and onto policy platforms and candidates.

We will be publishing this election breakdown twice a week during the election period. You can receive these as an email by going to the newsletter section here and selecting subscribe to ‘breaking news alerts’.

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