France: Minimum services proposed during public transport strikes
In July 2007, the French government issued draft legislation aimed at preventing industrial disputes in land-based public transport and providing a minimum service to passengers where strikes do occur. Although the proposals would not ban any transport workers from striking, they have been criticised by trade unions.
On this page:
Preventing conflicts
Transport services during strikes
Passengers’ rights
Trade union response
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Key points
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The Bill on "social dialogue and continuity of public service in land-based passenger transport" was approved by the cabinet on 4 July and submitted to parliament, which started debating it mid-month. The proposed legislation responds to a commitment made by the new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to guarantee users of public transport a “reduced but organised” service in the event of strikes or other foreseeable disturbances.
The basic idea of the Bill is that strengthening management-labour dialogue in transport companies will, to a large extent, prevent strikes occurring. When strikes do occur, the law would provide a framework for the provision of a certain minimum level of services, enabling advance planning of how the available human and other resources can be deployed for this purpose. It seeks to provide a “balanced framework” and to “respect the right to strike”.
The Bill has three sections: the prevention of conflicts; the organisation of public transport during strikes or other "foreseeable disturbances"; and the provision of better information and greater certainty for passengers.
Preventing conflicts
The Bill would require transport companies to enter into negotiations with trade unions representing their staff and reach a “framework agreement” on conflict prevention by 1 January 2008. This should lay down a procedure aimed at reducing the risk of strikes, including a requirement for negotiations to be held before trade unions can give notice of strike action. The procedure should include: notification of management by unions of the issues likely to lead to industrial action; the convening of a meeting with unions by management within three days of receiving this notification; rules on the duration of the negotiations; and the drawing up of a summary of the meeting's conclusions, to be distributed to employees.
Similar agreements could be reached at sector level and apply to any companies that fail to reach their own accord.
A government decree would set out rules on negotiations in advance of issuing strike notices, to apply in companies that do not have their own conflict-prevention agreement or are not covered by a sectoral agreement.
Some transport firms already have conflict-prevention agreements, notably the RATP Paris regional transport authority (agreements signed in 1996 and 2001) and the SNCF national rail company (agreement signed in 2004). The Bill provides that such agreements in place before 1 July 2007 would remain in force until new ones in line with law are signed.
The Bill aims to prevent a practice whereby a series of overlapping strike notices are given by unions, as this can “seriously disrupt the functioning of the service to the public”. Therefore, when one or more unions have issued a strike notice, the same organisations would not be allowed to issue a further notice relating to the same issues before the earlier notice has expired and before the procedure laid down by the new law has run its course.
Transport services during strikes
The Bill provides for those responsible for public transport, such as local or regional authorities, to lay down transport service priorities, following consultations with representatives of passengers. These priorities should include those services to which access constitutes an "essential need" of the population. In this process, the authorities should take into account the right to strike, but also other rights protected by the French constitution. These include: the right of access to public services, especially health, social and education services; freedom of movement; freedom of commerce and industry; and freedom to work.
On the basis of these priorities, each transport company would have to draw up an "adapted transport plan" setting out the services to be provided during strikes, and a plan for the information of service users. These plans would obligatorily be included in the contracts signed between transport authorities and companies after 1 January 2008, while existing contracts would have to be amended by the same date.
Transport companies would be obliged to negotiate collective agreements on the arrangements to apply during strikes or other foreseeable disruptions of services. These should enable companies to organise effectively and rapidly the services they are able to offer in such circumstance. They could include the reassignment of non-striking staff from their normal jobs in order to provide the services included in the “adapted transport plan”.
Under the proposed legislation, all transport company employees whose presence is directly required for the provision of services would have to inform their employer in advance of their intention to participate in a strike. To allow the company to determine the service that can be provided during a strike, and inform the public accordingly, these employees would have to inform management of their intention to strike at least 48 hours in advance.
This information on individual employees’ strike intentions could not be used for any purpose other than organising services during a strike and would be covered by confidentiality rules. Using the information for other purposes or passing it on to anyone other those responsible for organising transport services during the strike would be criminal offences.
Employees who join a strike without informing their employer would be liable to disciplinary action.
When a strike has been under way for eight days the employer, on its own initiative or at the request of a representative trade union, would be entitled to organise a consultative secret ballot on whether or not employees wish the strike to continue. The ballot would involve all employees affected by the issues mentioned in the strike notice, whether striking or not. The company would have to inform the labour inspectorate of any such ballot, which would have to be organised in such a way as to guarantee the secrecy of individual employees' votes. The outcome of the ballot would "not affect the exercise of the right to strike", presumably meaning that it would not be binding, but merely provide an indication of staff’s views.
The Bill reiterates the principle of “non-payment for strike days”, underlining that the pay of striking workers must be reduced in line with the time spent on strike.
Passengers' rights
All users of public transport services would have the right, in the event of a service disruption, to precise and reliable information on the service to be provided, as laid down in the above-mentioned user information plan. Where this disruption is foreseeable or results from a strike, this information must be provided at least 24 hours before the start of the disruption or strike. It would be the responsibility of transport companies to ensure that this right to information is observed.
A decree will set out the conditions under which transport authorities could require transport companies to reimburse passengers' fares, fully or partly, if the companies fail to implement their "adapted transport plan" or user information plan during a strike.
Trade union response
Unions have responded cautiously to the government's bill. They do not believe that the proposals represent a fundamental attack on the right to strike, especially as they do not seek to force any transport employees to work during strikes. However, they argue that the Bill would put the right to strike “under supervision” and that the proposed measures could be counterproductive.
The unions are particularly critical of the plan to make individual employees inform their employer in advance of their intention to join a strike. The CFDT confederation, for example, sees this as posing "a serious risk of restricting the right to strike", which would be particularly unacceptable if applied to all companies, regardless of size and structure.
The CFDT also regards the Bill’s provisions on minimum services during strikes as being in conflict with the government’s stated wish to encourage social dialogue. It is in favour of giving priority to negotiations over all issues affecting the "quality, continuity and adaptability" of transport services, with an agreed mediation procedure. Such a negotiated approach would, in the CFDT's view, rule out the idea of balloting employees on continuing a strike, which it believes would cause pointless tensions among employees.
The CFDT sees the article of the Bill underlining the principle of “non-payment for strike days” and government statements on the issue as creating a false belief that paying workers for time on strike is a common practice in public transport. It describes this as a "provocation" and an "insult" to all employees who lose pay for striking, and stresses that it has never called for payment during strikes. The confederation demands the removal of the article in question.
Despite these criticisms, the CFDT welcomes the Bill’s emphasis on collective bargaining to avoid conflicts and is in favour of the principle of obligatory negotiation of conflict-prevention agreements in transport companies. However, it stresses that such agreements are also required at the sector level in order to avoid discrepancies between companies that could create a form of unfair competition among them. According to the CFDT, existing company agreements on "strike warning systems" in public transport have shown their worth and their extension across the whole sector would "develop a real practice of social dialogue" and prevent conflicts.
The CGT union confederation has reiterated its opposition to "any new limitation of the right to strike in the public transport sector and the implementation of a minimum service that would be the means of applying it". It regards the planned obligation on employees to give notice of participating in a strike as an “unrealistic” and “unacceptable” attack on the "individual exercise of the right to strike". Such a procedure, it argues, would be complex to implement and would not improve the ability to plan services during strikes, indeed "quite the opposite".
According to the CGT, the managers of public transport companies already have at their disposal a number of ways of "organising transport plans during strikes and optimising the available resources (human and material)" without the need to introduce new constraints, whose "only objective is restricting the exercise of the right to strike".
The CGT sees the idea of balloting staff, both strikers and non-strikers, after strikes have lasted eight days as “totally useless” and argues that it would prevent a part of the workforce from exercising freely their constitutional right to strike. The CGT claims that the sole aim is to “pressurise, intimidate and divide” employees, and that the outcome would be a deterioration in the industrial relations climate in companies and a loss of confidence between employees and management.
Finally, with regard to the proposal that transport companies should be required to negotiate agreements on the arrangements to apply during strikes or other foreseeable disruptions of services, the CGT wants the bill to stress that the organisation of transport plans during strikes and the reallocation of non-striking staff should strictly observe safety rules.
This article is based on material submitted by
Christophe Boulay, European Employment Review correspondent for
France.
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