PARIS _ Forget presents. All French people want for Christmas is to be able to get on a train to visit family and friends.
It looks increasingly like Santa or, rather, labor unions won't be delivering that anytime soon.
Strikes by transport workers against the government's pension-reform plan are shutting down 50% of national and local trains this weekend and 59% on Dec. 23 and 24. The national railway company SNCF said it suspended its unaccompanied minor service, canceling about 6,000 tickets for children who were planning to travel during the vacation.
"Since the start of the protests, the government has put maximum pressure on" rail companies, government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said Friday on RTL radio. "But you have to face up to the facts: when you don't have drivers to drive trains you can't make trains move. All my thoughts and sympathies go to families and children. There are some children of divorcees who won't be able to join their parents for Christmas."
Sixty-three percent of the French wanted unions to call a halt in strikes during the holiday season, a Dec. 18 Elabe opinion survey showed. A new OpinionWay poll on Thursday showed 55% of respondents said unions were "wrong" to keep striking during that period. While some unions are calling for a truce, others aren't.
The Christmas calls may only be a temporary respite for President Emmanuel Macron as opposition to his pension reform, a cornerstone of his presidential platform, is rising. The Elabe poll shows that at 57%, more people reject the plan now than when protests started more than two weeks ago. Some unions have called for a new protest march on Jan. 9.
While Macron's government has barreled through reforms of tax and labor laws, the current gridlock shows how deeply the French are wedded to their pension system. Macron wants to merge 42 separate regimes into a single universal points-based system. The plan also offers incentives to raise the age for full retirement benefits to 64 from 62.
Workers have been protesting proposed changes to one of Europe's most complex and costly pension programs. The French government wants to phase out special retirement plans for sectors ranging from train conductors to dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet.
Support for the protests has remained strong even as the walkouts and demonstrations have created havoc for millions of workers commuting on public transportation _ mostly in and around Paris _ and led to hundreds of miles of traffic jams around the French capital.
Car-sharing platforms such as the French unicorn BlaBlacar have seen a surge in reservations. Bookings have doubled since the start of the protests and have beaten records, the company told Bloomberg. Bookings have also doubled on its BlaBlaBus coach service, and it has added buses on lines such as Paris to Lyon, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
"We see a real solidarity of drivers, more people are offering seats then ever," said Nicolas Brusson, Chief Executive Officer of Blablacar, told Bloomberg.
The company, created in 2006, will have two million seats available between Dec. 20 and Jan. 5, that's the equivalent of about 5,000 TGV high-speed trains, Brusson said.
Railway monopoly SNCF has called on travelers to change their tickets but pledged it will seek to make sure the main lines and the most demanded ones will run on Dec. 23 and 24.
Union leaders met with French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe on earlier this week, with several of them saying talks failed to advance and signaling that they planned to continue protests.
The hard-line CGT and some other unions have called for further strikes and demonstrations through the end of the year unless Macron withdraws his plan. One of France's more moderate unions, the CFDT, has called for a Christmas truce.
"I want a truce at Christmas," Laurent Berger, the leader of the CFDT, said on French radio France Inter Friday. "Everyone should be able to travel freely to do what they need to do during the holiday season."
