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STRIKES

Huge disruption to flights, despite French air traffic controllers calling off strike

Travellers are braced for massive disruption on Thursday with around half of flights in and out of France cancelled, despite air traffic controllers calling off their strike at the last minute. Budget airline Ryanair says that it has also been forced to cancel 300 flights passing over France.

Published: 24 April 2024 10:51 CEST
Updated: 25 April 2024 08:13 CEST
Huge disruption to flights, despite French air traffic controllers calling off strike
Air traffic controllers have called off their strike. Photo by BORIS HORVAT / AFP

The SNCTA union had called a 24-hour strike on Thursday, April 25th in a dispute over changes to working patterns.

The strongly supported strike was set to cause huge disruption, but on Wednesday morning the union announced that last-minute talks had been successful and “an agreement has been reached”.

The SNCTA strike notice for Thursday has now been lifted, but disruption is still likely on Thursday, especially at Paris airports.

It is expected that 75 percent of flights in and out of Paris Orly airport will be cancelled and 55 percent of flights at Paris Charles de Gaulle.

‘75% of flights cancelled’ – which airports are worst affected by Thursday’s disruption?

In addition to cancellations of flights in and out of French airports, the budget airline company Ryanair announced that over 300 of their flights set to fly over French airspace would also be cancelled. 

Ryanair said that around 50,000 passengers would be affected in some way, and the most disrupted flights would be those flying over France to get from the UK to Greece, Spain, and Italy.

The disruption is due to the last-minute nature of the strike cancellation, combined with the fact that smaller unions which had also filed a strike notice could still go ahead with Thursday’s walk-out.

People with flights booked for Thursday should check with their airline for possible delays or cancellations.

The SNCTA had also threatened to file strike notices over the May holiday weekend – on May 9th, 10th and 11th – but after reaching an agreement with management, the union withdrew its strike notice for these dates.

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STRIKES

Paris garbage collectors strike as city readies for Olympics

Paris garbage collectors went on strike on Tuesday, two-and-a-half months before the French capital is due to host the Summer Olympic Games.

Published: 15 May 2024 09:44 CEST
Paris garbage collectors strike as city readies for Olympics

Paris rubbish collectors had warned of possible strikes over the summer, raising the spectre of piles of trash roasting in summer heat on the streets as hordes of athletes and tourists descend on the City of Light.

ANALYSIS: How likely is strike chaos during the Paris Olympics?

Unions and City Hall differed on how many of the collectors had walked off the job on Tuesday.

Paris city hall said that 16 percent of staff, or one in six, were striking.

“Collection services were little affected today,” a City Hall official told AFP, without providing further details.

But the CGT union branch that represents garbage collectors, hailed a “strong” mobilisation effort, saying that 70-90 percent of staff, depending on the arrondissement, had walked off the job.

CGT said that some 400 striking workers had “occupied” the building housing city hall’s human resources department on Tuesday morning.

City Hall put the number at 100 and said they had left by 12 noon.

CGT had warned that walkouts would occur on several days in May and then continue from July 1st to September 8th.

Summer Olympics will run in Paris from July 26th until August 11th, and the Paralympic Games from August 28th to September 8th.

Refuse workers in the Paris region are demanding an extra €400 per month and a one-off €1,900 bonus for those working during the Olympics, when French workers traditionally take time off for the summer holidays.

The mayor’s office had previously told AFP that it would extend bonuses of between €600 and €1,900 that it had already announced for workers contributing to the Olympics effort to refuse collectors.

The mayor of Paris’s 17th arrondissement, Geoffroy Boulard, said the strike was “irresponsible”.

“To take hostage not only Parisians but also tourists and visitors is also an attack on France’s world image,” he said.

In March last year, a three-week strike by rubbish collectors against unpopular pensions reform saw more than 10,000 tonnes of waste piled in Paris streets at its height.

Images of the heaps of trash, some mounting several metres high, were seen around the world.

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