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Low cost in high-speed train in France. Customer-king and the public service guillotine

estimate that one would have to be crazy to pay more than the minimum fare and they
accept, for example for inhabitants of Ile-de-France, to depart from Marne-la-Vallée or
Massy. Every little helps.

4. In the “side structure”, work and employment degraded

Other than economic and management reasons that we have just discussed, what motivated
the birth of the low cost in rail transport is of the same nature than in air transport ; bypass
resistances. Those goals are divided in two dimensions: a) fight the routine and relative
facilities offered by “path dependency” in the firm’s management and the definition of its
commercial strategy (North 190, Pierson 1994) and b) bypass the resistance of salaries that
are turning against the weakening of their collective protections. If we should distinguish
those two dimensions from an analytical point of view, the manager practical sense sees
them both as intricate. We can consider by hypothesis that there is a functional relation
between the productive act and the markets of both products and labor that, in a capitalist
frame, makes them possible. This is what presumably meant a consultant, presented like
one of the designers of the iDTGV model, when saying: “when we are trying to be innovative
in a firm of this type (i.e. SNCF), we are blocked by the culture. The only way to act is to
create a side structure” (told by Bouaziz 2012).

4.1 Making railway workers work differently

But the side structure isn’t destined to remain lateral and soon irradiates the parent
company. “Should we get more inspiration from OUIGO, that has reduced its cost by 40%
compared to ordinary TGV organization by making the railway workers work differently ?”
asks Le Figaro with a false ingenuity? On the same plan, the breakup of SNCF in two, then
1
three EPIC (“network”, “mobilities” and “Head EPIC”), legacy from the railroad reform of
July 2015, also obeys to the same logic, whatever be the circumstances that have favored
its emergence.

Working in the railway low cost mainly supposes not to benefit from statutory protections
of SNCF Railroad workers, except for train conductors, train controllers and maintenance
in technical center, to the best of our knowledge. In this regard, firms or side low cost
railway companies do not distinguish themselves from subcontractors (security, cleaning,
welcome, etc.) whose primary vocation (but not exclusive) is to bypass the advantages
often conquered by the workers of the main company, in this case the SNCF.

iDTGV is a great illustration of the weakening of closed labor markets (economists would say
internal (Doeringer 1967; Doeringer & Piore 1971) of railroad workers by low cost initiatives.
This entity functioned with very little directly employed personnel: 80 employees and 1200
providers (Bouaziz 2012). “The firm is using resources that are all located outside of its
perimeter”. Thus, exterior providers are operating its booking system and its customer
service. It was the same for ticket control, which was done before the train departure by a
provider society. In 1992, less than half of iDTGV’s permanent employees came from SNCF
(ibidem).

On board of iDTGV, “supervisors” and “barristas” (responsible for food and beverages)
were not iDTGV employees (in fact, railway food and beverages have been subcontracted

1 http://premium.lefigaro.fr/societes/2016/01/22/20005-20160122ARTFIG00349-les-petits-prix-plombent-les-benefices-de-la-
sncf.php

International Congress on High-speed Rail: Technologies and Long Term Impacts - Ciudad Real (Spain) - 25th anniversary Madrid-Sevilla corridor 439