The acid test continues for Transdev, the first private operator to run trains on a regional line instead of SNCF Voyageurs. In fact, the operator has won the tender for the busy Marseille-Nice line that has been operating since last June.
Punctured by certain dysfunctions, the company will experience its first strike on November 6 and 7 (it will begin on November 5 at 7 p.m.). The notification was presented by Sud-Rail. According to our information, it promises to be “very popular.”
Sud highlights an internal survey that shows that 8 out of 10 employees are not convinced of the answers given and support a strike.
A worrying reorganization
In a letter addressed to the management of Transdev Rail Sud Inter-Métropoles that we have obtained, the union organization indicates: “On September 11 they received our federation and its union section that presented the staff’s demands as well as the collective complaints resulting from the creation of the company. We had to wait until October 2 to receive a report that fails to reassure the employees.”
Below is a long list of demands related to the different families of agents working for the new operator: salespeople, drivers, ground agents and maintenance. And demand “concrete progress that allows social conflicts to be avoided.”
Remember that the law requires that SNCF railway workers affected by a change of operator (as in this case) be transferred to the new operator on a voluntary basis. The new operator must maintain the previous social conditions but only for fifteen months. Then all old SNCF agreements will have to be renegotiated in each new company.
If Transdev has repeatedly stressed that it wants to “pay better” railway workers (transferred or contracted), the operator seeks above all to thoroughly review the organization of operations by imposing, in particular, great versatility on agents.
“Our contribution is that with the same budget for the Region, we run twice as many trains thanks to a different organization, with more flexibility, more flexibility, more diverse activities for agents,” Thierry Mallet, general director of Transdev, stressed last June in BFM Business. A versatile approach that ulcerates the joints.
Transdev offers fourteen daily round trips between Marseille and Nice, a busy line, especially among employees. During two months of operation, the operator transported nearly one million passengers.
Source: BFM TV
