Twenty industrial sites have been targeted by the unions, who say they do not want to “annoy motorists”.
Cash or goods transporters, ambulance drivers, movers… Employees in the road transport sector are called to action on Monday 27 June. All transport union federations are indeed calling for a national protest movement to demand wage increases in road transport.
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“The health crisis has highlighted the importance of transport activities, which have even been declared of public utility by the government. But this recognition did not translate into negotiations over wages or working conditions.“, deplore the CFDT, the CGT, FO, the CFTC and the CFE-CGC in a joint press release.
The blockades started at dawn. Twenty industrial sites have been targeted, according to The Parisian . “All regions will be affected but we don’t want to bother motorists“, declared to the Ile-de-France daily Patrick Blaise, secretary general of the FGTE Route CFDT, the first trade union in the profession. Are thus concerned Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Rennes, Nantes, Lille, or even Metz. “We are going to block the big operators: transport of goods, passengers, logistics, transport of funds…“, had assured at the beginning of the month Thierry Douine, president of the CFTC-Transports.
Towards other strikes in October?
Unions demandthe unconditional reopening of real NAOs (mandatory annual negotiations, editor’s note) in all sectorsof road transport, to deal withgalloping and exponential inflation, a severe shortage of employees due to the lack of attractiveness in all of the CCNTR’s sectors” and one “purchasing power of employees melting like snow in the sun“.
In the road transport of goods, agreements were signed last February (revaluation of salary scales by 6%) but “they have already expired“because the minima have fallen below the Smic, indicates Thierry Douine, because of inflation – which reached 5.2% in May over one year according to INSEE. “In the cash and valuables transport sector, no upgrading of conventional grids for seven years“, are also indignant the unions. In logistics, companies in the sectorstick to their indecent proposals for a 3% increase in conventional rates“, they add.
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This mobilization is only “a first day“, warns Patrice Clos, boss of FO Transports. “If we are not heard, the government must know that we will start on longer actions from October“, he said on Franceinfo. A new social crisis is thus brewing in a sector, transport, which does not yet have an appointed minister in the government of Elisabeth Borne.