In addition to the 4,900 recruitments on permanent contracts, the RATP will offer 1,000 work-study contracts and 700 integration contracts (AFP / Archives / Sameer Al-Doumy)
The RATP is in the starting blocks a year and a half before the Paris-2024 Olympic Games and plans to recruit 6,600 people, including 4,900 on permanent contracts, to prepare for it, unprecedented volumes for the group yet faced with a problem of attractiveness which its CEO Jean Castex promises to tackle.
“Most of the service difficulties encountered by the RATP are linked to recruitment difficulties”, insisted on Monday Mr. Castex, visiting the GPSR training center, the agents responsible for security in stations and trains.
“We will do everything to be there” for the Rugby World Cup in September and October this year and especially for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, promised Jean Castex in front of a few journalists.
After a catastrophic end to the year 2022 for the RATP with a quarter of the buses not running and a supply reduced by 10 to 20% in the metro, the RATP has decided to take the major measures to restore a level of service equal to that before the Covid, and above all be ready for the major sporting events to come.
Recruitment difficulties, increase in absenteeism and resignations, latent social conflict among bus drivers or maintenance… The causes of the degradation of service are now known.
Among the 4,900 CDIs sought, there are 2,700 bus drivers – almost double the number of last year –, 400 metro drivers and 700 station and station agents.
“Over the past six years, on average, the RATP has recruited between 2,000 and 3,000 agents per year,” recalled the former Prime Minister to highlight the effort made. In 2022, the Régie, for example, hired 2,753 people, more than expected due to the deterioration of the service.
– Increase wages –
Jean Castex also insisted on two particularly tense sectors due to a shortage of personnel: maintenance and security.
Last year, problems of understaffing in certain maintenance workshops led to a deterioration in service on several metro lines, where the rate of maintenance of rolling stock had to be slowed down.
The RATP wishes to recruit 400 agents to restore the expected level of service.
But security is also facing recruitment problems, with 120 vacancies. The lack of candidates and competition from other players, particularly municipal police, explain these difficulties.
Currently, there are between 940 and 950 agents at the GPSR while “today, we have the budget to have a thousand”, lamented Jean Castex.
The basic salary of an agent when he joins the GPSR amounts to 2,000 euros net per month (over 13 months), indicated Séverine Besse, the head of the service.
“What makes us attract more is to pay people better,” admitted the boss of the public group without difficulty. “I decided to put the package”, he continued, citing as an example the increase of 1,365 euros net for all over the year negotiated by the CEO with the unions.
“It’s a big budgetary effort for the RATP. We are increasing salaries to be attractive but also because the cost of living is rising, and the RATP is drawing on its resources,” said Mr. Castex, additionally faced with a skyrocketing energy bill.
In addition to salaries, Jean Castex has announced his intention to “improve the quality of life at work” for agents to “retain the people who are there”. As he has often pointed out, he wishes to rely on the social housing stock available to the RATP to offer affordable apartments close to their place of work to his employees.
© 2023 AFP
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