French transport strike to continue Mon. as holiday peak nears

PARIS, Dec 15 (KUNA) -- Major disruptions to France national and urban transport services will continue Monday, despite appeals for "a holiday truce" to allow people to spend the Christmas vacation in serenity.
The national rail carrier SNCF said on Sunday there would be a slight improvement in intercity, high-speed services on Monday, with about 30 percent of trains running compared with 25 percent on Sunday.
Local and regional services will still be severely disrupted, with only between 15 percent and 40 percent of those services running, the SNCF said in a statement.
But as the strike go into its 12th day on Monday, Paris traffic is again set to be highly problematic, with eight of the major Metro subway lines completely closed and partial service only provided on six others.
Other two fully automated lines are predicted to be running as they are driverless, but they are likely to be totally saturated.
Key suburban services operated by the RATP regional authority in Paris will also be heavily affected, with services very limited and only at peak hours.
Just over 50 percent of the 4,500 Paris buses are predicted to be on the road on Monday.
The devastating impact for businesses and Christmas shoppers is likely to be catastrophic, especially as December is the busiest month of the year.
Some businesses are saying they are seeing a drop of 30 percent in business and warn of a prolonging of the protests, which began against reform of the retirement system and a harmonisation of the 42 different retirement regimes here.
Almost all major unions have called for nationwide protest marches next Tuesday, which could be the biggest turnout since the strikes started on December 5.
Some other public-service employees have joined the protest but the government is seeking to separate them from the militant transport workers, who say they will not call off the protests even over the Christmas holiday.
Prime Minister Edouard Philippe called late Saturday for consideration for French travellers at Christmas, and the SNCF senior management has also called for a truce.
But it is the crucial transport sector which can bring most pressure to bear on the government, and truck drivers say they will join the protest next week.
Also, almost all of France's eight refineries are blocked by pickets and production is slowed down because of work stoppages. One refinery caught fire over the weekend in what was called an accidental pump failure.
First reports of gasoline shortages in the distribution network began emerging on Saturday. (end) jk.gb