At the Massy-Palaiseau station (Essonne), at the foot of the footbridge which sees some 40,000 travelers per day on the RER, trains, or buses, Peggy Prunier and Christelle Brigot receive customers more calmly than they did a few weeks ago behind their “Services” counter. This was before they joined the 180 volunteers for the four-day week.
On January 28, RATP began the first phase of a vast experimentation with new work rhythms to improve the balance between private and professional lives of its agents, and strengthen the attractiveness of the professions. The RER B and metro lines 5, 7 and 9 joined the operation launched in three directions: services, maintenance and human resources.
The four-day week “of” or “in” is slowly spreading among companies in France. Despite positive feedback from the United States and the United Kingdom, where employers noted an average increase of 15% in their turnover after this organizational change, only 5% of French companies had adopted the four-day week, at the end of 2023, according to the Association for Executive Employment (APEC). These pioneers, mainly SMEs, have mainly chosen an increase in working hours over four days, followed by a three-day weekend.
“I’m less tired”
The originality of the RATP experience is to redefine the calendar to set up a four-day week with unchanged working hours: four days worked, followed by a classic two-day “weekend” (not necessarily Saturday and Sunday), and we start again on a cycle of seven weeks including fourteen days of rest. Only controllers and managers work twenty minutes more per day, compensated by additional rest per cycle.
“For shift agents, management has endeavored not to increase their daily working hours”, explains Mireille Majerczyk, head of the operational management of multimodal services and spaces (SEM). Technical studies were carried out in the summer of 2023 to design these new bearings. Then discussions were held with staff representatives, which continued until December 2023 to lead to an agreement, signed on February 21, for three years, by the unions (FO, CFE-CGC and UNSA), but not by the CGT. “Our demand is a four-day week at 32 hours. And this more general agreement on quality of life and working conditions contained other provisions on disconnection or exposure to pollution in the metro which did not suit us.justifies Bertrand Hammache, the CGT-RATP general secretary.
You have 66.15% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.