“Everyone plays at being a little railway”: in Marseille, railway workers demonstrate against Transdev’s first TER trains

Opposed to the operation of TER trains by the private operator Transdev , around 300 railway workers mobilized at Marseille's Saint-Charles station this Monday morning, at the call of the inter-union (CGT, CFDT, FO and SUD). Another rally took place in the afternoon in Toulon, on the occasion of the official inauguration of the line. "We have been denouncing the opening to competition for months. We are in favor of an integrated company, not a fragmented one. Dividing everything up is not good for public service," François Tejedor, general secretary of the CGT cheminot Paca, the majority union, told AFP.

"We are not saying this in a dogmatic way, since the English are going backwards, after decades of disastrous opening up to competition. The Germans find themselves in very serious difficulties. The Belgians, contrary to the recommendations of the European Commission, have decided to make a direct award to the historical operator," he lists. For him, opening up to competition will not change anything in the structural problems of the state of the network: " We saw it yesterday, they are faced with delays linked to network problems."

"The Marseille site is very shaken up by these openings, with the arrival of Trenitalia on the line with Paris. We have a real climate of anxiety and the union organizations have filed a social alarm ," explains Julien Troccaz, federal secretary of Sud Rail Paca, who specifies that a strike notice has been filed. "They have gone into the logic of rail SMEs, each playing at being a small railway. Except that the rail system is not that, it is an integrated system which requires collaboration or pooling," adds the union representative.

On Sunday, the first private TER trains – managed by the Franco-German group Transdev – to run on a line formerly operated by SNCF, began their services between Marseille and Nice, marking the culmination of a competitive bidding process initiated in 2018 by the Paca region.