French rail workers have launched three months of rolling train strikes, prompting street demonstrations and transport chaos, in the first major test for Emmanuel Macron’s pro-business resolve to liberalise the economy and loosen labour rules in the state sector.

The first day of the strikes – dubbed “Black Tuesday” – caused large-scale disruption to the country’s 4.5 million rail passengers. Frantic crowds on Paris platforms queued to squeeze themselves on to scarce trains with some passengers falling on to tracks, while railway workers and students marched through major cities.

Over three-quarters of train drivers and almost half of essential rail staff walked off the job across the country. Only one regional train in five and one high-speed TGV train out of eight was running. Commuter lines into Paris were severely affected and international train services were cut, with no trains between France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain and three out of four trains running on the Eurostar service connecting to London.

The strikes against Macron’s plan to push through sweeping changes to France’s vast state rail system mark the biggest industrial action against the president since he took office last year.



At rush hour crowds of commuters at the Gare de Lyon tried to shove their way on to packed trains heading to the banlieues south east of Paris.

“I’m neither for or against this strike. I’ll put up with it because rail workers are fighting for exactly what I’m fighting for every day: a pay cheque to be able to put food on the table,” said one 50-year-old school support worker who had woken at 4am to commute from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. She said she saw Macron as the “president of the rich” whose manifesto benefited the higher echelons of society, while the rail workers defended the interest of everyday people.

A 64-year-old administrator who had been commuting daily into Paris from the southern banlieue for 24 years said: “I’m sickened by this strike. If I can’t turn up for work I don’t get paid. Reforms have to happen and at last Macron is the first leader to really try to change things.”

Commuters stand in the doorway of a crowded train in Paris. Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images

The rail sector is traditionally one of France’s riskiest political issues. The centrist Macron never pushed rail reform as a major part of his election platform of pro-business economic change, but his proposals to cut rail workers’ special employment rights and turn the state-run railway, SNCF, into a publicly listed company have become a byword for the government’s vow to cut state debt and overhaul labour policies.

Polls show that over half the French public is currently against the strikes and the government is hoping to keep public opinion on its side. If the strikers are seen to be defending a common interest or the future of the French public sector, the challenge could become harder for the government, which until now has easily seen off other strike action and last autumn quickly passed into law a major rewriting of the labour code.

Macron’s ability to push through his other planned changes – such as complex French pension reform – is at stake. His La République En Marche! party is framing the dispute not only as an indicator of Macron’s ability to stand firm but as a battle for the country’s soul and approach to economic change.

“We need to rid this country of its strike culture,” Gabriel Attal, a party spokesman, said just before the strikes began.

The hard left has called Macron a French Margaret Thatcher, accusing him of trying to privatise the rail system by stealth. But this French rail strike is very different to Britain’s yearlong miners’ strikes in 1984.

The government argues that the SNCF, which is heavily in debt, has to be overhauled and made more efficient before local and national passenger services are opened up to competition in coming years under European Union rules.

The government intends to cut rail workers’ special employment rights so that new hires would not have jobs for life or special retirement provisions. But there are also plans to change the SNCF structure, turning it into a publicly listed company.

Unions and politicians on the left fear that this transformation – even with the state owning 100% of shares – could eventually lead to the rail operator being privatised.

SNCF agents assist a group of commuters waiting on a platform at Marseille-Saint-Charles station. Photograph: Bertrand Langlois/AFP/Getty Images

The government denies that it is paving the way for privatisation. The prime minister, Édouard Philippe, insisted on Tuesday that the government “does not intend to privatise the SNCF” but that “the status quo is no longer tenable”.

Emmanuel Grondein, head of Sud Rail, one of four unions behind the industrial action, said: “We’re defending the French public service, not just rail workers.”

Unions have bristled at government suggestions that rail workers enjoy unfair privileges with job-for-life guarantees, automatic annual pay rises and a generous early retirement policy.

“It’s not true what they’re saying about rail workers having golden life,” said one SNCF worker in southern Paris. “I have staff on my team on tiny salaries working very hard on maintenance down tunnels with rats, clearing litter, ensuring safety. This is a very difficult moment. It’s very tense and I fear it’s going to get worse.”

Any question of overhauling the SNCF has always proved controversial. The train network ground to a halt for weeks when trade unions opposed changes to rail staff’s benefits in 1995. The strikes of that year paralysed France and forced the then-prime minister, Alain Juppé, to abandon the reforms – a defeat that ultimately prompted Juppé to quit.