at RATP, a forced transformation

They are a good hundred, on this sunny Friday April 2, at the entrance of the RATP bus center in Vitry-sur-Seine (Val-de-Marne). CGT flags flapping in the wind, they came to support an elected union official threatened with dismissal. If the “Employer repression” is the theme of the day, the subject of the arrival of competition and the changes it induces at RATP dominates the conversations: “Regression”, “dismantling”, “heartbreaking”. “I’m not going to wait for the competition … I’m going to quit first”, announces Manu (the people named whose name does not appear wished to remain anonymous), 42, a machinist in Vitry-sur-Seine for eight years.

Article reserved for our subscribers Read also Covid-19: French public transport in suffering but “resilient”

Behind the militant bravado arises a deaf concern, that of employees of a venerable public service – the management is 73 years old – now engaged in the greatest upheaval in its history. The heart of RATP, the public industrial and commercial establishment (EPIC), grouping together all monopoly activities (RER, metro, tram, bus, in Paris and in the inner suburbs), is being shaken like never before.

EPIC RATP, which represents 80% of the company’s 5.5 billion euros in turnover and 45,000 employees (70% of the workforce), has been restructured, reformed, and divided into centers in recent months. profit (“Business units”, or BU). With, in sight, the competition which arrives in less than four years for the bus activity and its 18,000 employees (in 2030 for the tram, in 2040 for the metro and the RER). Ile-de-France Mobilités, the organizing authority, will allocate line packages to the highest bidder before the end of 2024. And the RATP has a lot to lose.

“Reducing our structural costs”

“The scale and pace of the transformation that the company is going through are unprecedented, agreed the CEO of RATP, Catherine Guillouard, on March 26, in front of journalists from the transport press. The legislator decided, in 2009, to open all at once, to the 1er January 2025, all bus lines, representing 40% of the EPIC workforce. It could have been more graduated, but it is so, and we are adjusting to that reality. So, three years ago, I launched a major transformation project accompanied by a performance plan intended to reduce our overhead costs. “

Article reserved for our subscribers Read also Secularism, discrimination …: at RATP, Frédéric Potier inherits an enlarged and strained position

At the heart of this mini-revolution, the BUs created last year. Three have emerged: one for security (the metro police), one for urban services and, above all, a major for the surface network, namely buses and trams, itself broken down into dozens of smaller units made up of one or more depots and operating as mini-enterprises.

You have 58.32% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.