Handicapped by its low salaries, the SNCF is struggling to recruit

The phenomenon started this summer. For lack of drivers, the SNCF canceled 47 TER per day in the Aura region (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) until August 15. Still because of a lack of drivers, Transilien users in the Parisian suburbs are penalized this fall. Thus, until the end of September, 19 trains per day out of 600 are removed on line C of the RER. On line D, 28 trains disappeared in the first half of September according to Sud-Rail.

“Today, we lack about fifty drivers on the Transilien and less than a hundred on the TER”, recognizes Catherine Woronoff-Argaud, head of recruitment policy for the SNCF group. To explain this “hole”, the incumbent rail operator invokes the context. “During the pandemic, we continued to hire. But not at the same pace due to confinements and traffic restrictionsexplains Catherine Woronoff-Argaud. As a result, in 2020 and then in 2021, we hired 550 drivers…