Agreement in the evening
Eurotunnel shut down for hours due to strike
December 21, 2023, 10:04 p.m
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Christmas time means a lot of stress. A strike in train traffic is not at all convenient. But the Eurotunnel employees want a bonus and are paralyzing operations. Many travelers are upset and the French transport minister shows little understanding. The agreement comes in the evening.
Shortly before Christmas, an unannounced strike completely paralyzed traffic through the Eurotunnel between Great Britain and France for hours. Tunnel operator Getlink announced that employees on the French side had stopped working at the end of the year in a dispute over a bonus.
There was then excitement among travelers at the major train stations in Paris and London. In the evening, the unions announced the end of the strike and that train services would resume “tonight”. According to Getlink’s own information, it proposed a bonus of 1,000 euros to the employees, but the unions demanded three times as much.
Due to the strike, 30 Eurostar connections from Paris, London and Brussels were canceled. The car trains between Calais in France and Folkestone in England were also affected by the strike. The railway company Eurostar said via the online service X that it had “no information about the status of the services” on Friday. She asked her passengers to check the website to find out the status of their connections.
Chaos in the train stations
In the evening, the French unions announced the end of the wildcat strike. Traffic will resume in the evening, said union representative Franck Herent. The negotiations with management had “produced results that satisfied us,” he said. At the Gare du Nord in Paris, passengers in the crowded waiting hall were informed of the train cancellations via loudspeaker announcements in the afternoon.
“There are no trains running to London today, we ask you to exchange your tickets for the coming days,” it said. Many travelers tried to rebook their tickets and frantically searched for alternative travel options on their smartphones. The strike also caused anger and excitement on the other side of the English Channel. At London’s St. Pancras train station, security staff struggled to move people away from the platform who had already passed checkpoints on the Eurostars to Paris and Brussels, as a journalist from the AFP news agency reported on site.
France’s Transport Minister Clément Beaune described the blockade of the Eurotunnel as “unacceptable”. “An immediate solution must be found,” he said in a post on X. “I call on everyone to take responsibility and ensure good traffic and holiday conditions.” The Eurotunnel, which opened in 1994 and is approximately 50 kilometers long, is one of the longest railway tunnels in the world. About 38 kilometers run under the English Channel. Passenger trains, as well as trains carrying cars and trucks, pass through the tunnel.