France braces for ‘black Tuesday’ of airline, railway, trash collector strikes

France braced Monday for the start of three months of rolling rail strikes, the first in a series of walkouts affecting everything from energy to garbage collection as President Emmanuel Macron’s reform agenda meets resistance.

Staff at state rail operator SNCF were set to walk off the job from 7 pm, kicking off stoppages on two out of every five days which unions warn will cause major disruption for France’s 4.5 million train passengers.

The real action begins on what the press has dubbed “black Tuesday,” with only one high-speed TGV train out of eight set to operate and one regional train out of five in the strike against a major overhaul of the debt-ridden SNCF.

Three out of four Eurostar trains to London and Brussels will run and the Thalys train towards Belgium and the Netherlands will operate almost as normal, but there will be none at all towards Spain, Italy and Switzerland.

Trash collectors, some staff in the energy sector and Air France employees will also strike Tuesday in the biggest wave of industrial unrest since Macron’s election last May.

The rail strikes, set to last until June 28, are being seen as the biggest challenge yet to 40-year-old Macron’s sweeping plans to shake up France and make it more competitive, earning comparisons with Margaret Thatcher’s showdown with British coal unions in 1984.

Unions say the centrist ex-investment banker intends to “destroy the public railways through pure ideological dogmatism.”

His changes “will fix neither the debt issue or that of dysfunction” in the railway system,” they said in their strike announcement.

Air France meanwhile is set to operate 75 percent of flights Tuesday as staff stage their fourth strike in a month seeking a 6-percent pay rise.

While not linked to Macron’s reforms, the Air France walkouts – also planned for April 7, 10, 11 – add to a febrile mood among France’s unions.

Macron’s government says the SNCF needs deep reform as EU countries prepare to open passenger rail to competition by 2020, arguing it is 30 percent more expensive to run a train in France than elsewhere.