A few hundred striking RATP employees gathered at the company’s headquarters on Monday morning asked to be received by Jean Castex to obtain a salary increase of 300 euros, while a strike movement has been agitating the maintenance workshops for several weeks. For his first day at the head of the RATP, former Prime Minister Jean Castex was eagerly awaited.
Instead of Jean Castex, a small delegation was heard by Sylvie Buglioni, director of MRF, as well as by a representative of the group’s human relations. The interview was cut short when several dozen demonstrators interfered in the meeting.
“We have become die-hards”
Faced with the employees’ complaints, the management representatives stuck to promising that they would be received by Jean Castex “in the coming weeks” and that the wage demands would be discussed “in the context of the end-of-term negotiations. year “. In a video message addressed to RATP employees and whose 20 minutes became aware, the former Prime Minister Castex affirms “to perceive the concerns which are expressed and it will be necessary to respond to them”. He also adds that he does not know “any levers other than those of dialogue, of listening”. He will therefore have the opportunity to activate them.
Reassembled, the strikers plan to continue their movement. “The agents did not go on strike for a month and a half for nothing,” says Thibault Dasquet, maintenance agent at the Rueil-Malmaison workshop. For another employee of the Choisy workshop, the strike “begins to be felt on the bank account”. “That’s what management expects, for people to be dry and stop the movement,” he explains.
Started on October 18 at the Sucy-en-Brie workshop where the RER line A trains are maintained, the strike movement has since won “a good fifteen” workshops out of 25. The workshops have some 3,000 employees. . It is intensifying and could be reinforced by a bus drivers’ strike. “I am there in support”, testifies Faouzi Abou Rayan, technician at the Clignancourt maintenance workshop who also plans to go on strike with his colleagues to “snowball” and obtain “the common goal” of the 300 euros. “We have become die-hards,” he laments.