Page 442 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Dressen, Marnix

for a very long time). Personnel characteristics are very telling. In iDTGV’s headquarters,
“beside direction functions, there is only one market cell that analyses live the prices of
the competition (essentially air transport) so that the fares remain competitive”.

In OUIGO branch, personnel are “SNCF agents that are sworn and certified by the Republic
prosecutor to check for contraveners’ identity.” In order to save on workers’ costs, workers
affected to OUIGO come back home as often as possible, in order to spare the famous RHR
(Rest out of Residence), also called “sleepovers”, that make the employer give bonuses and
pay for a collective house or a hotel room.

Controllers also have seen their mission evolve with rotations between long days on board
and shorter ones, dedicated to “platform controls” of tickets before departure, and regular
2
formations “integrated” to work planning, according to the Head of “SNCF Traveller” .
A controller in OUIGO explained that he was wearing the uniform of this branch and not
the one of its original employer SNCF, but that accepting to work for OUIGO opened the
perspective of an accelerated career. “In principle, becoming controller on TGV is only
possible after some experience as a controller on most classic lines (TER, Intercités). But by
applying on OUIGO, we can become ASCT (Agents of commercial train service) (which means
controller) on fast train lines without waiting for the end of our careers. And honestly,
working on Transilien wasn’t my thing. Working on OUIGO gives me more responsibility and
more bonuses” (interview, May 15th 2017). One couldn’t say better that the aim is to jostle
traditional promotion rules based on experience, even though they remain – whether we
like it or not – the most objective criterion for personnel evaluation. On the controller’s
side, they have seen additional tasks added, like “taking the train to cleaning” when their
ordinary TGV colleagues have “jockeys” taking care of this function according to the CFDT
general secretary for conductors (FGAAC CFDT). For the time, the most significant seems
to be that low cost has effects on workers, technical centers, those that the client never
sees. “Maintenance of OUIGO trains is faster, is only done by night and is centralized on the
Gerland (Lyon) technical center and its 400 railroad workers” (some parts of the maintenance
is also done in Tourcoing (Kestel and Larue 2016). The acceleration of train cleaning tends
to multiply by two their monthly exploitation, from 40-45 kilometers by month to 80.
Besides recruiting non-statutory personnel, employed by other firms than SNCF, one of the
most salient questions is relative to the extension of night work on technical centers (but
night bonuses make it less unacceptable). Tomorrow, night work could extend to workers
in charge of maintenance of ordinary TGV. A management teacher speaks of the managerial
logic that ends up in “proposing worse working conditions to their employees” even though
they “work longer” (Zilberberg, sd).

“Once those new practices, notably for equipment maintenance, have been implemented,
I don’t see why the direction would not try to enlarge them” declared a leader of the
Unsa union to Les Echos. And the financial press indicates “with its low cost offer, SNCF
aims at taking back some market sections to the road. But it also surely tries to use those
3
changes to jostle its labor organization.” “All the TGVs will not turn into OUIGOs”, declared
the Head of “SNCF travelers”, who nonetheless confessed that SNCF wished to “take into
account some good ideas developed by OUIGO in order to generalize them on TGVs”:

(http://www.lavoixdunord.fr/economie/tgv-ouigo-une-organisation-du-travail-aux-couts-
resserres-ia0b0n3284093). All is said.

2 http://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/actualites/tgv-ouigo-une-organisation- du- travail-aux- couts-
resserres_1755834.html
3 https://www.lesechos.fr/05/06/2012/lesechos.fr/0202097879442_avec-son-tgv-low-cost--la-sncf-veut-aussi-tester-de-nou-
velles-pistes-de-productivite.htm#Dud72A011Yq1cWyX.99

440 360.revista de alta velocidad