France sees 2nd day of rail chaos as strike bites

Millions of French commuters suffered a second consecutive day of travel chaos on Wednesday as striking rail workers locked horns with President Emmanuel Macron's government in a dispute over reforming the state-owned SNCF railways, reports Reuters.

Commuters in and around Paris pushed their way onto the few trains running during the rush-hour while many platforms in the French capital's busiest stations lay empty.

Macron wants to transform the heavily indebted rail company, which loses 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) each year, into a profit-making public service able to withstand foreign competition when its monopoly ends in 2020 in line with European Union rules.

Unions reject plans to end rail workers' special privileges, including job-for-life guarantees and early retirement, and complain the government is paving the way for privatizing the SNCF.

Macron, a former investment banker, has set a summer deadline for the overhaul to be completed.

"I don't understand the strike. Some say we want to break up public services and it's simply wrong," Julien Denormandie, a junior minister in Macron's government, told BFM TV.

In taking on the rail unions, Macron is treading where past presidents have either failed or steered clear, determined to cement his image as a fearless and indefatigable modernizer of the French economy.

The battle's outcome could define Macron's presidency, with trade unions already badly bruised by his success in liberalizing labor regulations last autumn also needing to score a win.

Other protest movements are also simmering, with university students, public workers, garbage collectors and pensioners all angry at Macron's social and economic reform agenda.

So far, though, they have shown no sign of coalescing into a single, more potent movement, just as France prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the May 1968 anti-establishment revolt that transformed the nation.

On Wednesday, only one in seven high-speed TGV trains were running - slightly more than on Tuesday - and one in five trains on overground commuter lines into Paris, similar to Tuesday's levels. The unions plan to strike two days in every five over the next three months.

"It's not our aim to frustrate rail passengers. Our goal is to find a way out of this row, to sit down and negotiate and find real solutions," said Roger Dillenseger of the UNSA-Railways union.