The post you are reporting:
Courtesy of the Times.
President Macron set the stage for battle with France’s powerful railway unions yesterday with plans to scrap cherished employment rights that governments have long avoided reforming. The unions cried foul and vowed strikes to block Mr Macron’s overhaul of the SNCF state railways. His gamble is drawing comparison with Margaret Thatcher’s showdown with the miners in Britain in the mid 1980s. Unions, which had already announced a strike for March 22, were infuriated Mr Macron’s planned use of executive decrees to force through his reforms by the summer, avoiding long parliamentary procedure. Édouard Philippe, the prime minister, said the government “is not seeking a fight with anyone” but added that it was time to carry out the overhaul.
In 1995, strikes forced President Chirac to give up an attempt to end the so-called SNCF “special regime”— job guarantees for life and retirement in their 50s, still enjoyed by almost all 260,000 SNCF employees. Nicolas Sarkozy also abandoned a promise to end the regime in 2007 although he enacted a retirement reform that covered almost everyone else. Train drivers still retire at 52 and the others still below 60. As well as job guarantees, workers enjoy other perks such as free or cheap rail tickets for their families and access to cheap housing. “The situation is alarming, not to say untenable,” said Mr Philippe. “Whether or not they take the train, the French are paying more and more for a public service that works less and less well. We want to look at reality in the face. It’s time to dare to carry out the reform that all the French know is necessary.”
Emboldened by his successful overhaul of the labour laws last autumn, Mr Macron has calculated that public opinion has shifted against the rail workers. The profession traditionally enjoyed a patriotic respect comparable to that of farmers. Dissatisfaction is high with railway services despite their flagship high speed network and support for their privileges, created in the 1940s, has waned.
The government is nevertheless treading carefully. The end of the employment privileges will only apply to new recruits. The government abandoned a recommendation to close unprofitable rural train services, made in a report earlier this month by Jean-Cyril Spinetta, a former Air France boss.
It also promised that it would not privatise the heavily indebted rail system as the British had done, which French unions have feared. To ease the SNCF’s €46 billion of debt, it will be turned into a new state-controlled firm with a “mission of public service”.