the DGSI survey reveals a tense social climate at RTE

Before being a citadel of engineers, data scientists and economists, RTE is a company “hands in the dirt”, as the chairman of the management board, Xavier Piechaczyk, says (262,500 euros in gross salary, 80,000 euros in variable part, in 2021, according to the state participation agency). Oil used as insulation in transformers. Copper electrical wires. The steel of the 250,000 pylons. The concrete of the tunnels for the buried lines, in particular those which pass under the sea or under the mountains, which have become essential this winter to import electricity from the rest of Europe.

On his 9,500 employees, about 4,000 work in maintenance, the famous “line workers”, day and night, along the high voltage lines (between 63,000 and 400,000 volts). The CGT has always held a solid place there, under the banner of the Energy Federation, very attached to the status of the electricity and gas industries, with unionization rates remaining high.

The unions are tough on RTE’s management. “With the Ecowatt app [qui donne des alertes aux consommateurs sur les risques éventuels de coupures], Xavier Piechaczyk has somewhat become the Olivier Véran of electricity”, squeaks a trade unionist, annoyed to see the boss of the company take the media light. The year 2022 was marked by a very tough social conflict over the demands for a salary increase.

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Long strikes, carried in particular by the CGT. “Management is in bulldozer mode, they are not looking for compromises”, criticizes Francis Casanova, central delegate of the CGT. Even if, after long months of battle, the management and the unions agreed, in mid-December 2022, on salary increases in the face of inflation in 2022 and 2023, following other companies in the sector, in particular Enedis and EDF.

A “normal procedure”

One episode in particular marked the spirits in the company: the recourse to the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), in July 2022, regarding protest actions in Hauts-de-France. The approximately 200 minutes of the criminal investigation, consulted by The worldshow that the company chose to warn the espionage service in parallel with the filing of a complaint for acts of intrusion into the computer system, committed on the sidelines of a trade union movement, having disrupted RTE in its management of the networks in the area on those days.

After a particularly thorough internal investigation, RTE’s security services, led by a retired Gendarmerie general, identified four suspects among the employees. The DGSI took over: judicial wiretapping, geolocation of movements, searches by around twenty police officers and scientific technicians, then a little over seventy-two hours of police custody for the four employees involved. “With colleagues, we had organized ourselves to try to get people talking about us since the normal channels were not working”justified Antoine B. in front of the investigators by recognizing the facts like the three other men interviewed.

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