Posted on 05/25/2018 10:57:29 AM PDT by Olog-hai
The French government has agreed to absorb €35 billion in debt from the state railway SNCF, a top union official said Friday, as it seeks an end to nearly two months of strikes.
Luc Berille, the head of the UNSA union, said that the state had proposed taking on €35 billion ($41 billion) of the SNCF’s €46 billion of debt, starting with €25 billion as soon as 2020.
“The prime minister was specific,” Berille said after talks with premier Edouard Philippe, adding that the government would increase infrastructure investment by €200 million a year to reach an annual total of €3.8 billion. […]
Absorbing the debt has been a key demand from unions, but it looked unlikely to to break the deadlock, with the hardline CGT union saying it would continue the strikes.
Earlier this week, the results of a poll organized by unions showed that 95 percent of respondents rejected the government’s proposed rail reforms, the CGT announced on Wednesday. […]
Unions also oppose the transformation of the SNCF into a joint-stock company whose shares would be held by the state — which they see as a first step to privatization — and want the state to take on the bulk of its legacy debt. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.fr ...
At this point, probably fighting is needed. The unions fight on the wrong side, of course.
but if it’s taxpayer funded, are they already not on the hook for the 35B debt?
that’s where i get lost, if it’s state funded is it also part private owned?
Yes, the public is on the hook for that “absorption” of the debt. More billions down the rathole. Of course, France doesn’t have its own currency to devalue anymore.
Macron’s plan is actually fascistic in nature, to turn SNCF into a nominally-private company with majority of shares owned by the state. Don’t know if it’ll involve breaking things up into a pattern resembling the pre-SNCF company structure (as the UK partial privatization broke things up into a pre-Big Four system), but for now, the unions rejected his plan.
thx...
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