Pensions: RATP unions temporize on a hardening of the movement

No hardening of the movement at this stage at the RATP. While at the SNCF, the proposal for a renewable strike is already on the table to roll back the government on its pension reform, the inter-union of the Parisian board, meeting on Wednesday morning, adopted a waiting position.

“We reaffirm today in unity our hostility to the pension reform wanted by the executive and demand its withdrawal”, hammered in a joint press release the CGT, Force Ouvrière, Unsa and CFE-CGC. For the rest, they have decided not to decide anything before the next day of interprofessional mobilization, next Tuesday.

Determined to “build a large-scale movement”, the four organizations called on “all the agents of the company to express their refusal against (this text) by participating in the strike and the demonstration of January 31”. A possible hardening of the mobilization will therefore wait until 1^er February, when the intersyndicale will meet again “to agree on the follow-up to be given”.

Fluctuating mobilization

The tone is – for the moment – less offensive than that employed Tuesday, within the SNCF, by the CGT Cheminots and SUD-Rail. In a joint press release, the two organizations, respectively first and third most representative within the company, first called for “two consecutive days of strike on February 7 and 8”. But they also and above all opened the door to a renewable movement from “mid-February”, for the start of the winter holidays in the Île-de-France region. A position not followed at this stage by the Unsa railway and the CFDT Cheminots, who do not want to plan anything beyond the mobilization of January 31.

So far, the scale of mobilization has been fluctuating. If it turned out to be massive during the interprofessional day of January 19 and promises to be so on Tuesday, the other initiatives launched in the meantime have collapsed. At the SNCF, the notice given for this Thursday was not followed.

A Castex effect at the RATP?

Within the RATP, the social climate is also much less explosive than a few weeks ago. Since his arrival at the head of the board at the end of November, Jean Castex has continued to give pledges of goodwill to the trade unions, which he had met in the wake of taking office.

The former Prime Minister thus obtained the remarkable signature of FO, the CGT and the Unsa at the end of the mandatory annual negotiations, with a salary increase of 105 euros net per month at the key for all the agents. . Discussions on extending the working hours of bus drivers in exchange for a bonus, to partly resolve the labor shortage, also found a favorable outcome in early January. The strike had also been little followed among bus drivers on January 19.

Finally Tuesday evening, during his vows, the former mayor of Prades did not fail to emphasize that it was “not to be taken lightly […] the concerns” of the employees on the outstanding subjects within the Régie, starting with the opening up to competition, calling on “all the stakeholders” to “provide rapid responses”, seeming to taunt, in hollow, the plans of an executive whose head he left in the spring. What again calm the tension in the company, and encourage part of the unions not to engage in a very hard conflict on pensions, as in 2019-2020.