Like the weather, things are turning stormy for bus users in Paris and its inner suburbs at the end of May. On Monday May 23, Tuesday May 24 and Wednesday May 25, a new strike by RATP machinists is expected to disrupt traffic on the Paris transport surface network. According to the forecasts of the public authority, the bus offer will reach between 50% and 75% of the usual traffic, depending on the lines. We can also expect some disturbances in the tramway. On the other hand, in the metro and the RER, traffic will be normal.
This is the third social movement at the RATP in less than four months, after a big mobilization for wages, on February 18 (very followed in the metro and the RER), and the strike day of March 25, which, conversely, mainly affected the bus lines, since it was linked to the next entrance (1is January 2025) of the RATP surface network in a competitive system.
This new triple strike comes, in a way, to put an end, and symbolically conflicting, to the failure of the negotiations which, for more than a year, have sought to adapt the working conditions of the 18,000 machinists to the opening up to competition. No agreement could be reached with any of the four representative organizations of the company (CGT, FO, UNSA, CFE-CGC) before the closing date of the negotiations set by the management, namely April 29.
” Scandal “
The RATP, which is for the first time confronted with calls for tenders on its historic monopoly (12 lots of bus lines will be put on the market), is seeking to bring its house rules, advantageous for its employees, closer to social rules minimum requirements which will be imposed on all operators in Paris and the inner suburbs from 2025. This new organization of work, preparatory to the competitive big bang, must be put in place at RATP on 1is July.
“We proposed to increase working time by 120 hours per year, explains RATP HRD Jean Agulhon. All this in return for a gross salary increase of 2,600 euros, the equivalent of a fourteenth month. As the agreement was not signed, we launched our plan B.” And plan B is a unilateral decision by the employer to add twenty hours of annual working time for machinists, against an increase of 460 euros gross per year. “This refusal to sign weakens the employees themselves, emphasizes Mr. Agulhon. Within the competitive framework, they will undergo the increase in working time beyond twenty hours, without the counterpart of a substantial salary increase. »
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