2023-10-23 07:41:34
Don’t take risks. In application of European principles, the 2019 mobility orientation law provided for, on January 1, 2025, a switch to a competition regime for all buses in Paris and its near suburbs. Competition is already effective in the greater Paris suburbs. However, at the beginning of the year, many left-wing elected officials, including the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, alerted the government to the possible effects of such a big bang.
In fact, the date of opening to competition is set just a few months after the Olympic and Paralympic Games. With the risk, therefore, that a social conflict could disrupt the holding of this event. In the columns of The crossthe Minister for Transport Clément Beaune himself said he was ready for a possible postponement.
A compromise solution
Convinced that improving the service requires competition among operators, regional president Valérie Pécresse (LR), who is also at the head of Île-de-France Mobilités, the transport organizing authority, was initially shown to be opposed to any modification of the calendar. “Postponing the opening to competition because a minority of staff could take users hostage would mean giving in to blackmail”she justified in January.
But the right-wing elected official finally announced, in July, that she agreed to loosen the timetable, by gradually allocating the 13 lots, for commissioning no later than the end of 2026. The lots furthest from the center of the capital should be assigned first.
This solution requires a legislative adjustment. And this is precisely the purpose of the bill proposed by Vincent Capo-Canellas. The UDI senator from Seine-Saint-Denis insists on the extent of this “unprecedented operation”which in total will concern 19,000 drivers (or “machinists” according to the term used at the RATP), 4,800 buses, 308 lines, 1,300 stopping points… “By relaxing the timetable, it is about successfully opening up to competition, both from an operational and social point of view”he pleads.
The thorny question of employee transfer
Social, because one of the sensitive issues is that of the transfer of part of RATP employees to other operators who will be allocated lots. Vincent Capo-Canellas proposes on this subject that the attachment of employees be taken into account not according to their line, as envisaged until now, but according to their deposit. “This should prevent 2,000 drivers from changing workplace”, he believes. Its text, it is indicated in the explanatory memorandum, “allows the transfer of employees from bus centers [vers d’autres opérateurs] with maintenance on site or the use of volunteers to change site”.
The proposed law is in line with a report written by the former boss of RATP and La Poste Jean-Paul Bailly. “During a possible transfer, RATP employees must be able to retain the sometimes more protective rights attached to their collective agreement”, summarizes Vincent Capo-Canellas.
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