Objective: to restore transport in the Ile-de-France region. In 2024, and for the second year in a row, the RATP is launching an ambitious and massive recruitment campaign to improve its transport service, in difficulty since the pandemic, and above all to be in working order for the Olympic Games next summer.
Users see it every day: the service offered in recent months is light years away from that before the Covid-19 crisis. And one of the reasons for this collapse in quality is partly due to the lack of human resources.
600 station agents recruited before the Paris 2024 Olympics
There was “undoubtedly an insufficient perception that the world of work had evolved significantly, and therefore recruitment which proved insufficient to cope with the service which was resuming”, recognized Jean Castex, Chairman and CEO, during his wishes last week.
Since the appointment of the former Prime Minister in November 2022, with the roadmap to redress the situation in Parisian transport in crisis and to save the Olympic Games, the situation has improved, but without completely returning to the expected level, according to monthly statistics published by Ile-de-France Mobilités (IDFM).
After 6,600 recruitments in 2023, RATP is targeting 5,300 this year. “Before the Covid period, we were rather on annual averages of 3,500 or 4,000,” recalled Jean Castex, traveling to the station agent training center this Tuesday. The latter are precisely part of the priorities of the current recruitment campaign with a target of 900 recruits, including 600 before the Olympics.
“We had, it’s true, made a lot of savings on these positions and we realize that we have undoubtedly gone a little too far,” admitted the CEO, emphasizing the importance of these personnel in the tourist reception system during the Games.
1,670 drivers to recruit… and retain
The transport authority also wants to continue massive hiring on the driver side, where the lack of staff and absences partly explain the problems encountered in the bus or the metro.
In November, five metro lines were still below 85% regularity during peak hours, in particular due to staffing problems, indicates Valérie Pécresse, president of IDFM. To redress the situation, the RATP is therefore targeting 320 recruitments in the metro and 1,350 for buses.
Attracting candidates is not a problem according to Jean Castex, but “the whole objective of human resources policy is to build loyalty”. The public group, like others, is facing an increase in resignations attributed according to the unions to the deterioration of working conditions and the end of the advantageous status of RATP agents.
Covid-19, housing prices and abandoned parcels
The CEO believes that it is the constraints linked to the public transport service (night work, weekends and public holidays) which are less well accepted since the Covid-19 crisis.
In addition, the price of real estate in the Paris region accentuates these departures, more massive than before, and Jean Castex wishes to “be much more ambitious in terms of housing for employees”, by offering more social housing, but also “better address the issue of child custody”.
If Valérie Pécresse recently raised her voice by asking to restore a transport offer equivalent to 100% of pre-Covid from March, Jean Castex took the liberty of recalling that “we are not going to reduce abandoned packages to 0 % by the end of March”, recalling during his wishes their increase of 260% between 2019 and 2023.
Obsolete equipment singled out
Even if this were the case, “we have lines which have more obsolete, older equipment, on which, as if by chance, we find lower performances”, he recalled to illustrate the difficulty of his task. .
He welcomed the purchases of new MF19 metros decided by IDFM and expected for 2025, but this decision was taken “20 years late. And the only thing I don’t know how to do is go back in time,” quipped the former Prime Minister.