” Monday evening [12 juillet], lightning fell on the SNCF and its leaders. ” So speaks Thomas Cavel, secretary general of the CFDT Cheminots. Lightning is the Jupiterian announcement of the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, on the health measures put in place to counter the resurgence of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Among the decisions revealed to the French that evening, the obligation to present a health pass in August in long-distance trains stunned the national railway company. “We didn’t see anything coming, confirms an executive of the SNCF. And we were completely taken back, after having rowed for months to convey the idea that TGVs were places without contamination. “
The surprise is all the greater since, according to our information, the SNCF interpreted several signals received on the previous Friday, July 9, as clues that nothing was going to change. First, there is a meeting organized by the Minister of Transport, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, which brings together executives from Air France, Aéroports de Paris and Christophe Fanichet, CEO of SNCF Voyageurs. This is to resolve the problems related to international links with countries very affected by the resurgence of the coronavirus. However, at no time is there any question of a sanitary pass in the trains.
The subject will still be discussed in the evening, this same Friday. State services are questioning SNCF on the feasibility of such a measure. Company response: a compulsory health pass will be extremely difficult to set up; the government takes note of the response and the officials of the railway company hear nothing more. The conclusion then seems clear to everyone in the company: the idea will not be implemented.
“It’s the poisoned gift of summer”
The shock is therefore severe on Mondays after 8 p.m. However, the group will react without delay. A small SNCF Voyageurs management committee was improvised in the minutes that followed. A meeting between Mr. Fanichet and Mr. Djebbari makes it possible to urgently specify the trains concerned: they will be the TGV and the Intercités. A “sanitary pass task force” was set up, the IT departments and the Oui SNCF subsidiary got down to work on the technological solutions to be put in place.
But now the subject takes on a social dimension with the rise to the niche of the unions. This is because they had to face, from Monday evening, a deluge of questions from the base on the practical implementation of the measure. Who will control? Which agents will have to justify their health situation? On Tuesday, July 13, the CGT, the company’s first union, raises a social alert. “The prospect of sanctions for the unvaccinated is going to be a subject of conflict, warns Laurent Brun, secretary general of the CGT Cheminots. We have not been given priority for vaccines or for masks, but we have priority for constraints. It ends up being painful. “
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