Metro users, avoid line 5 (Place d'Italie/Bobigny Pablo-Picasso) or anticipate your trips this Friday, November 15, all day. This is the advice that the RATP is sending to travelers following the drivers' strike notice that the FO RATP union has filed for this line where it is very much in the majority. The “local social movement” is likely to be widely followed.
According to the union, more than 90% of the 150 drivers usually on duty on a weekday would have to stop working. For its part, the RATP, which could use drivers from the “general reserve” (around fifty agents who can intervene on all lines), estimates that metro traffic will be reduced to two trains out of five, all day long. Friday.
To alleviate the inconvenience, the Régie will increase the number of metros in circulation on line 4 (recently automated and therefore easier to reinforce) and station agents will be deployed as reinforcements in the busiest stations on line 5 to inform and guide travelers. Any traffic developments will be broadcast on the line X accounts, station screens and by audible messages in the stations concerned.
The union at the origin of the notice cites “managerial abuses” which multiplied after the Olympic period to explain this social conflict. “We had filed a social alarm. But the meeting with our management at the end of October led to nothing,” says Bastien Berthier, FO secretary of the traction division and himself a metro driver on the 5. “The colleagues therefore decided to go on strike to show their frustration. -le-bol”, adds the trade unionist, specifying that the movement will be limited to Friday.
Line 5, which serves three SNCF stations (Austerlitz, Gare de l'Est, Gare du Nord) and passes through République, is among the top five busiest lines in the network with an annual ridership of around 100 million. travelers.
