The event is rare enough to be welcomed: the four main unions of the SNCF will sign the agreement negotiated with management on support for the end of the career of railway workers. The CGT has already announced its decision alongside the CFDT and the UNSA. SUD Rail must sign this Monday, April 22, after consulting its troops.
The railway workers experienced the successive pension reforms as so many blows in the implicit moral contract which required that we accept, at the SNCF, a lower salary than in the private sector in exchange for an early departure. They get some form of reparation. Management wanted to work in depth on the last ten to twelve years of its teams’ careers. Which had not been done since 2008. An internal source acknowledges that the last agreement was ” obsolete “. This outcome, planned for June, was brought forward to prevent a new strike by controllers.
The new agreement is generous, in particular for railway workers who have difficult jobs, those who require staggered hours or night work. They will be able to benefit from an early cessation of activity. The maximum was obtained for the controllers, who made their anger known through a massive movement at Christmas 2023 or during the last February holidays and who threatened to start again in May. They can opt for a gradual cessation over thirty-six months. But instead of working part-time for this period, they will work eighteen months full-time (paid 100% excluding retirement bonuses, etc.) then stop for eighteen months (paid at 75%).
Better pensions
For other railway workers occupying a difficult position (drivers, switchers), the cessation of activity will be spread over twenty-four to thirty months paid 100% during the period when the activity is effective, that is to say the half the time, and 75% after that. Two thirds of jobs are considered difficult at SNCF. All railway workers with more than fifteen years of seniority, but no arduousness, will also be able to benefit from the system, over eighteen months, with nine months full-time and nine months of exemption from activity, all being paid at 75%. Railway workers will also be able to opt for a part-time scheme at the end of their career, during which the company will pay them 10% more than the time actually worked and will contribute to the entire salary.
To mature their choice, they will do a review interview ten years before their theoretical retirement date. Those who are unable to continue working in a difficult profession will be offered retraining options. Finally, for those who continue to work or for agents hired under private contract and therefore subject to the legal age of 64, two additional levels are created in the salary scale to offer them prospects for advancement and better pensions. . The twelfth level concerns people who have more than thirty-five years of seniority, approximately 5,000.
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