The status of controllers of the Ratp Followed the company’s developments to the search for commercial profitability and service quality. Controllers must now articulate their repressive role with a new status, that of commercial.
Controllers, a rewarding job ? This question may seem absurd from the point of view of customers. However their role within the Ratp has actually changed, according to the evolution of the company’s objectives, more towards profitability and quality of service, than to the extension of lines and their frequencies. This development is linked to the disengagement of the State in the financing and management of the public enterprise. Thus, the repression, which represents a significant source of income but whose counterpart is the increase in accidents at work, is preferred to the continuous presence of agents at the entrances, more expensive for the company. The Eluezabal survey is based on ethnographic work articulating this evolution of the logic of control at the level of management with the daily practices of field agents. Its approach makes it possible to understand the multiple facets of a profession with operation and complex practices, and whose taking into account of interactionist dimensions makes it possible to better understand the positive vision that controllers have. Indeed, these agents have a subordinate position but they also benefit from salary advantages (linked for a share of the number of fines harvested) and career advancement. Their recruitment is double. A variable part comes from station staff who are not attitted to a particular function. The other part is made up of volunteers who decide to specialize in control exclusively.
In the eyes of many controllers, the counter work is degrading because they are subject to
requests from a demanding and contemptuous customers. This resentment explains for some gohettors the desire to devote itself solely to control, to reverse the balance of power they undergo. However, this dominant position in the interaction between controllers and customers is partly supervised by management directives. They are asked to be “ both commercial and repressive ». This injunction is experienced as paradoxical because it tends to question the credibility and repressive function of the agents. For example, controllers can offer fraudsters to buy a monthly card and escape the fine.
The controllers are recruited on the basis of volunteering, which can be explained by the fact that the window activity is often experienced as devaluing, servile. On the contrary, control requires a more active and less routine practice. Thus, one of the explanatory elements of the positive judgment made by the controllers on their profession is the freedom that characterizes it. The feeling of customer impunity (“ The customer is king ) Also explains the choice of agents. The resentment that they experience with regard to certain types of travelers, explains their choice of control activity and control time. Thus an agent says preferred to work in the evening because the customers is made up of more marginalized while in the day the people of the higher social categories are more present. This agent feels lowered to their contact, in particular because these people dispute his action more, which is not the case for the marginalized, with whom he generally has more relaxed relations. This is why verbalize “ people in costume Represents a small victory for the agents.
It appears that the room for maneuver, the code of ethics of controllers in the establishment of a fine, is a determining element in the choice of the control activity, compared to the counter, where this freedom does not exist. Thus, for example, a person who merchants on the fine will ultimately attract the hostility of the agents while the latter were ready to soften their sanction. This reaction is understood by the control of the controllers to remain masters of interaction and to be able to determine the outcome so as to preserve their sphere of power.
In the second chapter, the author shows how controllers are led to develop a “ Intelligence of interactions ». This competence is based on a mastery of its reactions, especially when customers refuse to submit to the fine or they seek the confrontation with the agents. This self -control involves reflective work on your practices, reactions. It also makes it possible to conquer its place in the professional hierarchy and to distinguish itself from the counter agents who do not master this competence. This hierarchy partly takes up that which differentiates specialized workers from skilled workers.
This work is as a very interesting whole because it allows you to better understand several issues around work. First, it illustrates the current movement of rapprochement between subordinate jobs and public jobs. This development is in particular studied by Olivier Schwartz who works on bus drivers in the Ratp. Relational skills concern these jobs more and explain an increasing recruitment of young people from school democratization. Thus, the need to master your reactions, to respect the injunctions of the management, and to have a reflexive attitude is more the result of the younger generations who have partially acquired this ethos in school. This book illustrates very well, in an accessible and pleasant style, the new developments in subordinate jobs, generally belonging to the tertiary sector.