INVESTIGATION
The change comes in a very complicated context. While the SNCF is experiencing in recent weeks major disruptions, a wildcat strike in the TGV Atlantique maintenance center having succeeded to work stoppages after the accident of a TER in the Ardennes, the company will know the arrival of a new boss. Friday, Guillaume Pepy must indeed give way to Jean-Pierre Farandou, after more than eleven years at the head of the railway company. The new manager, who has seen his preparations turned upside down by the recent events, will be able to rely on his very good knowledge of the SNCF.
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While his arrival was planned for several weeks, the preparation of Jean-Pierre Farandou was obviously disturbed by the current context. The leader had set up a small team with whom he campaigned and helped him prepare for the hearings before parliamentarians. With this team, in which we find a former director of communication of the SNCF and one of the current leaders of the company, Laurent Trévisani, he is impregnated of all the subjects since his office of boss of Keolis. But this studious training accelerated the weekend of 19-20 October when the SNCF was blocked after the accident in the Ardennes. Jean-Pierre Farandou was then integrated into all the crisis meetings, which completely upset the end of his preparation, recognizes his entourage.
"He has no state of grace"
Once officially at the head of the SNCF, the first task of Jean-Pierre Farandou will notably reassure the employees of SNCF, ensures Gilles Dansart, specialist of the railway company. "He must convince them that he is in good faith, that he has a real project, that he is neither a servile servant of the government, nor a Pepy bis," he says at the microphone of Europe 1 "He does not have much time, no state of grace to try to get from them a kind of pause, the time he puts on the table of deeds, words, maybe let go of to avoid the SNCF plunges into a serious social crisis.It does not have much time and it does so under pressure.
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If Jean-Pierre Farandou has not yet issued an invitation, the unions expect to be received very quickly. Beyond the social climate, the new leader's desire is to succeed the new SNCF. As of 1 January, the railway reform must come into effect with the end of a totem: recruitment to the status. So far, Jean-Pierre Farandou has mainly made it known that he wanted to do differently from his predecessor, including stopping to create subsidiaries at all costs. He wants everyone to work together again, and wants to focus less on marketing than on everyday trains.
A career in the SNCF
To carry out his projects, Jean-Pierre Farandou can count on his very good knowledge of the company, he who has done his entire career in the company, to the point, that internally, it says that he did "cheminot 1st language". He began as a stationmaster in Rodez in 1981, and then led Thalys among others. He has also worked in the human resources department, and since 2012, he has managed Keolis, SNCF's urban transport subsidiary. This mandate allowed him to build an excellent network with local elected representatives.
However, the new boss of the SNCF should not have been him. At 62, he does not match the robot portrait of headhunters mandated to find the gem. And for its part, the executive wanted a young leader from outside to do at least two terms. But the post has experienced many refusals, on the pretext, in particular, that he was not paid enough (450,000 euros per year). If the amount is huge, it is not for a big boss who must manage 250,000 people in addition to being on the bridge 24 hours a day. "It's a prestigious job, but a job with a lot of money. 'Emmerdes', summarizes for Europe 1 a good connoisseur of the company.