This is the domino effect that the RATP wanted to avoid. This Saturday, the agents who run the buses in Paris and in the inner suburbs will be on strike all day. After this Friday’s agreement on the salary increase for drivers, the supervisors of the passenger information and regulation center (CRIV) for buses in Romainville in Seine-Saint-Denis, are also waiting for a gesture from the company.
Indeed, these 300 agents called “regulators” have the task of managing the circulation of the buses of the management in the streets of the capital and Greater Paris. This means making a bus wait if it is too close to the one in front of it, setting up diversions during various demonstrations, supporting drivers in the event of an attack, etc.
“We are the great forgotten of salary increases”
“As supervisors, we are the guarantors working conditions for machinists, their punctuality. We do not understand why we are the great forgotten salary increases, “questions an agent of the center. According to him, with the additional 300 euros just granted by the management of the RATP, a machinist will now “receive the same salary as a supervisor, our level, which is above”.
He insists, “We are there 365 days a year and 24 hours a day. Including since the growing difficulties linked to the lack of drivers. It happened to us in recent months to have to circulate a line on which instead of the 20 machinists necessary, there were only 8, says the agent again. And therefore, to ask them to finish later for example. “Situations that have logically generated conflicts. “All this is not taken into account,” he regrets.
Already on January 4, the CGT sent a “social alarm” to management, denouncing a deterioration in working conditions, which “nurtured growing discontent among CRIV agents as well as increased conflict with the receiving machinists” .
The document details the reasons: “Lack of recognition of the investment of agents during the health crisis, inappropriate restructuring of the tables following the new working conditions of machinists-receivers, crushing of salary grids between machinists and regulators and disregard for the qualification of regulators. The CRIV agents consider that a breaking point has been reached. »
The other supervisors of the bus and tram network called to strike
According to the agents, 98% of the regulators in the Romainville center could go on strike this Saturday. The repercussions on the bus service – already restricted – should however be limited for users. On the other hand, for the Parisian lines impacted by the demonstrations on the public highway, the service may be interrupted or partially interrupted “in anticipation as a precaution and over the full time slot of the event without the possibility of updating the passenger information in real time. “, Details for its part the RATP.
But the movement will be renewable on Saturday. And another walkout is already planned the following week, January 11, this time at the call of the CFE-CGC of the RATP. The executives’ union – which had triggered a social alarm at the start of the week to denounce the understaffing and the overload of work for the supervisors – is indeed calling on the some 2,000 senior technicians, supervisors and executives of the various departments of the “Bus business unit” of the Régie (regulation center, depots, training center, maintenance workshops, etc.) to a one-day “flash” strike next Wednesday.
“Not to annoy users, but to make management hear the anger of supervisors,” explains Fabien Renaud, president of the CFE-CGC of the RATP. “The multiple reorganizations that have taken place in the bus department, to prepare for the opening up to competition, have of course had an impact on the working conditions of the machinists. But also on those of the supervisors who nevertheless had no compensation. And that, our management finds it difficult to recognize it”, specifies the union representative who demands a revaluation of 75 points of the salaries of all the supervisors of the “surface network” department.
The RATP explains that “social dialogue is underway with the social partners to reach an agreement”.