The pattern is starting to become familiar. The strike which paralyzed part of the main line network (TGV and Intercités) this weekend in early December was not initiated by the unions, but by an informal collective, born of a WhatsApp loop and a Facebook page. Allied with the trade unions, this movement of dissatisfied controllers is made up of a few thousand employees united behind an unelected collective, organized entirely on social networks. Its magnitude was surprising: on December 3 and 4, the strike initiated by the collective led to the removal of 60% of the TGVs. Virtually unprecedented at the SNCF, this movement of spontaneous discontent is reminiscent of others in different sectors, such as that of the InterUrgences collective which emerged at the hospital in 2019. Thanks to growing mistrust of trade union movements and the representative democracy, affinity groups are emerging on social networks, evoking the yellow vests.
At the SNCF, everything was born from a WhatsApp loop. “For several months, another controller and I had been talking nonstop about our problems and our expectations. We have extended it to several other people in Marseille, and in other regions, ”explains Olivier, one of the members at the initiative of the movement, who works in the Marseille metropolis. Very quickly, the two controllers decided to create a Facebook page to make their conversation more accessible. The latter, baptized “national collective ASCT (Agent du service commercial trains)”, launched on September 27, now has more than 3,200 members. On this page, the administrators share press articles and videos relating to the mobilization as well as the living conditions of the workers.
Collaboration with unions
The organizers are also creating a Telegram loop – which has more than 670 people – where everyone discusses the demands. Among them, “the respect that we owe us”, slips Olivier. “Our missions are increasingly broad and our tasks increasingly diversified. We want recognition, ”continues the controller. This implies, for them, the integration of bonuses in the salary, but also, pell-mell, demands on the improvement of the progress of their career or on the organization of work. “As with the yellow vests, the demands of this collective are often numerous and unstructured. The movement was not centralized, some are demanding things that already exist but that the employees are unaware of, because the agents are under-informed, ”said Didier Mathis, the secretary general of Unsa Ferroviaire.
To push these demands, the members of this collective approached, in October, the trade unions representing the profession. “We told them that we would pass with or without them”, breathes Olivier. The “CNA” nevertheless had to ask for the help of the representative trade union organizations in order to be able to file a strike notice and initiate dialogue with the management. A request for immediate consultation was submitted at the end of October by Sud-Rail, the UNSA and the CFDT. “This collective marks an evolution: we had already seen collectives emerge in a few establishments, but the last informal national movement came from the controllers and dates from 1986”, notes Didier Mathis. That year, freight railway workers demanded a new wage scale.
Movements that have always existed
If this collective is a novelty in the world of rail, it is not in other sectors, such as that of the hospital. In 2019, the Inter-Urgences collective, which mobilizes paramedics, also started from a local movement from the Saint-Antoine and Lariboisière hospitals, in Paris, before becoming a structured national movement. At the time, Inter-Urgences claims more than 200 establishments mobilized. “Today we always exchange on WhatsApp groups, even by Signal, for very specific actions”, says Pierre Schwob, nurse and member of the collective. Mounted away from the unions, this movement of paramedics nevertheless had to obtain the agreement of the unions to file strike notices, as in the case of the controllers at the SNCF. “Similar small movements had already emerged in very localized Parisian establishments from 2015, notes Pierre Schwob. But at the time, the unions did not encourage this form of protest at all”.
Four years later, the situation has changed: the yellow vests have been there, and, with them, the desire to override the intermediary bodies – including the unions. “More or less spontaneous local movements have always existed, whatever they are, observes Dominique Andolfatto, professor of political science at the University of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, specialist in trade unionism and professional relations. But in the same way as with the yellow vests, social networks have accentuated this trait”. Discontent, pooled at the national level, is an opportunity to carry out multiple and coordinated actions throughout the territory. “This was also the case, in September, of the refinery strike action : it started with local movements, before being relayed nationally by the unions”, continues the specialist.
Critique of representative democracy
These informal movements feed on a growing distrust of union representation. On its Facebook group, the CNA thus claims to be “apolitical and non-unionized”. According to the rules defined by the administrators, it is indicated that the “ASCTs do not give a damn about union squabbles”. In the comments, the member controllers of the page approve the action, post observations on their daily newspapers and declare their adhesion to the collective… often to the detriment of the railway unions. “Excellent NAC, keep it up. We trust YOU,” writes a certain Benoît. “It would be more democratic for a NAC member to speak in the media rather than a shop steward who is neither ASCT nor representative of most of us! “Annoys another, nicknamed” Siceron “. A heap of criticism, which until now has been more discreet. “This criticism of the unions is old, but until now it was limited to word of mouth. Social networks have freed speech, ”analyzes Dominique Andolfatto. Like the members of the CNA, the Collectif Inter-Urgences also wanted to set itself apart from the central trade unions. “We met following a series of assaults on emergency room staff,” recalls Marie-Pierre Martin, president of Collectif Inter-Urgence. We wondered why our unions could not solve the problem, if it came from a lack of interest in our regard”.
Considered too distant from the employees and their concerns, the unions have therefore been partly short-circuited by the collectives. “The general criticism of representative democracy, which crystallized during the yellow vests, also affects the unions, notes Dominique Andolfatto. There is a diffuse feeling, among some, that the trade unionists have locked themselves in a lot, especially at the SNCF, in a logic of co-management with the management of the companies, or exhausted in the face of the reforms, as at the SNCF. They would therefore be less in tune with those”. These very angry employees illustrate part of the crisis affecting trade unions. In 2019, the unionization rate in France reached the lowest rate in its history, around 7% of employees. By way of comparison, at the time of the Popular Front or the Liberation, this rate was close to 50%.
Distancing from trade unions and the field
This great indifference could be accentuated in the years to come. “The Macron reform, which caused the merger of the staff representative bodies, resulted in a greater distance between the unions and the field”, observes François Pichault, professor of sociology at HEC Liège and Paris Dauphine University. . With the Macron ordinances passed in 2017, the staff delegates, the works council and the health, safety and working conditions committee (CHSCT) merged into a single body, the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) . “Our elected officials are 100% monopolized by these bodies, which leads to their absence on the ground, recognizes Didier Mathis. Reaching agents on national perimeters becomes more difficult. »
Faced with this lack of contact on the ground, the employees would therefore come to seek to organize themselves. They would move, as the researcher Vincent Pasquier described in a thesis in 2019, from a “solid” trade unionism – bureaucratic, formalized and inscribed in “the long term” – to a “liquid” model – “highly digitized, networked, improvised, flexible” – in which social networks play a key role. But there is no question, however, of completely abandoning the trade union authorities: are they, after all, the ones who can file strike notices, or start discussions with management. The groups interviewed are well aware of this. “We are using new forms of activism, but we could not have made our demands heard without the hospital unions, insists Marie-Pierre Martin. We want to work together.” At the SNCF, the collaboration between this spontaneous collective and the unions continues, while negotiations begin with the management this Thursday.