It has been going on since October 18.
A strike by RATP agents responsible for the maintenance of RER A and B trains and the Paris metro has been underway for a month.
It now threatens to spread.
The unions denounce this Friday "a security risk" while strikers are replaced by executives.
“I am worried”, indicated Thursday Gabriel Muller-Mallet, member of the CGT section and employee of the maintenance workshop of Sucy-en-Brie (Val-de-Marne), where the trains of the line are maintained in particular. To last.
“Today, only the brakes and the roof are checked, whereas the doors and fire extinguishers should be checked too,” he adds.
For a week, the striking workers of the Sucy-en-Brie workshop have been replaced by executives or supervisors, according to him.
"These are former technicians who have become managers who are no longer necessarily technically up to date", explains Jean-Christophe Delprat, general secretary of the Force Ouvrière union in charge of the RATP.
Seven metro maintenance workshops also affected
"We don't compromise with safety", replies the RATP management, which says it has "organized itself so that the maintenance activity continues with working, trained and authorized staff".
The trains, which travel between 800 and 1,200 kilometers a day, must go to the workshop for maintenance every 20,000 kilometers.
For lack of the usual number of workers, and despite the measures taken by the RATP, the line of trains awaiting maintenance is getting longer, according to the strikers.
The technicians of Sucy-en-Brie started a go-slow movement in October to protest against the abolition of a bonus.
Since then, the movement has spread to a good number of maintenance workshops for RER A and B but also metro lines.
On Thursday, seven out of twenty metro workshops were on strike (for lines 1, 4 and 7), as were four out of five RER A and B workshops.
Nearly 400 strikers, out of the 3,000 employees in the workshops, went to the RATP headquarters on Wednesday to demand wage increases "by 300 euros".
A “historic movement” among these workers who are “the worst paid in the RATP”, assures Jean-Christophe Delprat.
An impact on traffic
“Next week, all the workshops will be on strike and the disturbances on the lines will start to be felt,” he predicts.
This one-off social movement has “had no impact on operations until recently.
For a few days, it has generated a very slight impact on the circulation of RER A trains. Social dialogue is underway, ”reassures the RATP, which suffered a massive strike on November 10.
This movement, which is spreading in the maintenance centers, adds to other operating difficulties, such as the lack of drivers, which reduces the regularity of trains and metros, and technical incidents.
One more social subject to deal with for former Prime Minister Jean Castex, who will take over as head of the Régie at the end of the month.
