L’adaptation des modèles de production dans les pays émergents L’exemple de l’industrie automobile en Argentine

How to test for the existence of a new model of production based on the firm lending an ear to customer demands and valuing the individual and collective intelligence of its work force? The facts for putting this model to the test of reality come from an analysis of two Argentinean automobile-makers, subsidiaries of Toyota and Volkswagen. Various aspects of their organization policy provide evidence of their capacity for making adaptations by “hybridizing” the parent firm’s model with the rationales inherent in the network of local actors (suppliers and labor unions, in particular). These firms are open systems with a narrow margin of maneuver. — Special issue: Latin America.     

Le syndicat des travailleurs domestiques de Rio de Janeiro : un observatoire des transformations de l'emploi domestique au Brésil

This study of the major dimensions of actions undertaken by the labor union for household employees in Rio de Janeiro shows how the new “social rights” extended to these personal service workers has led to a new sense of what is “fair” and to an increase in lawsuits with employers. Given its place in labor relations courts, the union's position is ambivalent. Light is shed on the tensions between various categories of persons who visit the union's offices — tensions that tell us much about social relations. Attention is then turned to this small organization's role in labor courts: after cases have been heard, household employees often have a feeling that their rights have been upheld.     

L’Europe sociale : créativité institutionnelle communautaire et réalités nationales

“Social Europe” has been constructed following 50 years of EEC and EU policy-making, which has gradually extricated social questions from a pure rationale of economic integration in order to turn it into a lever for European political integration. The theoretical and disciplinary viewpoints are presented that, together, help us better understand the processes at work. Attention is drawn to three of them. First of all, the evolutionary process of building the EU accounts both for the differences between social Europe and national welfare systems, and for an ongoing process of institutional creation through an accumulation of EU legal achievements (acquis). Secondly, the expansion of the EU to twelve new member states lacking robust labor relation systems, along with globalization, represents a challenge for the future of the “European social model”. Finally, social Europe has not yet undergone an assessment. Problems arise owing to the short shrift given by treaties to questions of social legislation or redistribution, but the “Europeanization of national policies” apparently opens a way toward overcoming these obstacles.     

Le travail enseignant en lycée professionnel et ses paradoxes

The paradoxes in the work of teaching in French vocational education stem from the “symbolic closure” of these secondary schools. The latter, given the mass enrollment in general secondary schools, receive students marked by their failure in middle school. This has created a distance with the students' social and family environment and with firms, even though the latter are supposed to be the destination where these students are bound. The work of these teachers is strongly marked by “subjective ordeals” related to their subordinate position in the school system, to a concern for keeping peace in the schools and to doubts about integrating students in the world of work. Might the work of these teachers not lead paradoxically to reasserting the “weight of the educational form” by including therein actions that are supposed to help students “mature” and develop an “appropriate school identity”? In this case, the purpose of this work is the academic socialization and rehabilitation of young people as much as their vocational training as such.     

Effets pervers des déréglementations européennes : le cas du transport routier de marchandises

The transportation of freight by truck has been fully deregulated and opened to competition in the European Union, without any quotas or restrictions since 1July 1998. This deregulation has caused problems, mainly due to the delay in adopting common fiscal and social measures, road checks and sanctions for firms that commit offenses. Unscrupulous companies have used this legal vacuum in the EU to factitiously “outsource” activities and dodge national rules and regulations about taxes, labor relations and welfare. As a result, working conditions have worsened as barriers have been lifted. By definition, turnover is high among wage-earners. Truck drivers, semi-skilled, have become interchangeable on the EU marketplace. They can be profitably replaced with drivers from eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria), who are much cheaper and less protected. The spread of such practices is a cause of concern for labor organizations in Europe. Shipping by truck is a textbook case for analyzing how the EU is trying to counter the devious effects arising out of the deregulation of a branch of the economy.     

Les raisons de l’action collective : retour sur la mobilisation improbable des salariés d’hypermarchés

For the first time on 1 February 2008, three French labor unions (Force Ouvrière, Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail and Confédération Générale du Travail) called for a nationwide strike in hypermarket chains. Although the unions did not prolong the action on February 2, the wage earners of Hypermag Grand Large in Marseille went on strike for 16 days, demanding a special bonus of € 250, the recruitment of employees forced to work part-time into full-time positions and an increase in the employer's share in meal tickets (from € 3,05 to € 5,00). To explain why this movement occurred at that time and place, these employees’ objective interests and available resources are examined. This pair of concepts (as used in Marxism and then in the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, on the one hand, and, on the other, in utilitarian versions) suggests that labor actions by wage earners holding insecure jobs and having limited resources are improbable. Redefining the concept of the “interest” for a collective action in terms of subjective criteria helps us understand how what used to be tolerable ceases to be so, thus shedding light on the material processes that lead to forming the opinion “It's not fair”.     

Crise, effets de trajectoire et dynamiques sociales dans l'évolution de Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK

In 1998, contrary to all expectations, the model of production at Toyota's first European transplant underwent a crisis. This crisis was surprising not only because the Japanese firm apparently outstripped all other major auto-makers but also because its model of production was quite simply deemed to be the “one best way” for the 21st century. This detailed account of this crisis proposes an alternative theoretical approach for studying Japanese transplants by trying to identify the socioeconomic conditions for the viability of the models they convey. The stability of the social compromises among various parties in the firm (notably in the shoop floor) is a fundamental variable for the long-run viability of these systems.     

L’après-communisme et le déclin du syndicalisme à l’Est : leçons de Pologne et d’ailleurs

Trade unions in Eastern Europe have declined in almost all aspects since 1989, due not just to economic restructuring but to subjective factors such as reactions to communist-era legacies and skilled workers’ animosities towards the unskilled, which made union officials themselves skeptical of the value of unions. Starting around the turn of the new century, however, five factors now favor revival: survival imperatives of the union bureaucracy, incorporation into the European Union, emerging cross-border labor solidarity, a new generation of workers, and the end of postcommunism in the firm, or the dismissal of unessential workers, which means union officials no longer need to defend the unskilled. Three obstacles, however, continue to work against union revival: ideological (continued distrust of unions), organizational (plethora of small firms), and structural (location in the global economy). Organized labor is likely to remain weak, with a few stronger unions emerging in the manufacturing sector that are more elitist, male, and less class oriented than those in the past, while unions chiefly in the public sector would flounder. Such an arrangement is not conducive to stable liberal democracy.     

Syndicalisme et nanotechnologies. De l’espace des relations professionnelles à l’espace public des risques

The positions taken on nanotechnologies by trade union organisations, whether European or French, reveal a shift in union action. Traditionally, the trade union approach to occupational risk has been embedded in the field of professional relations, where “technical progress” is accompanied by demands formulated in terms of risk prevention. With nanotechnologies, the union response is framed in precautionary terms, with an emphasis on protection of the environment and human health before innovations are introduced. From this perspective, the study will show how the trade union movement has tackled the issue of nanotechnologies, moving from an initially work-related approach to one that places the accent on public concerns that go beyond traditional union preoccupations.     

Entre « passion » et incertitude : la socialisation au métier de footballeur professionnel

On the basis of a socioethnographic survey conducted in a professional soccer training center in France, the means of occupational socialization are analyzed in this demanding, captivating institution. Light is shed on how trainees appropriate this professional world and its requirements. As they enter this social universe, they encounter a key tension. On the one hand, training calls for a heavy investment that trainers and trainees experience as a “passion” and understand as being separate from the world of “ordinary” work. On the other hand, it is also a major source of uncertainty as to trainees’ prospects, given its intense selectivity and the few outlets in the labor market. It requires of trainees a strong commitment in time, body and spirit with prospects so uncertain that the course of training is seldom free from periods of soul-searching.     

Les apories de la solidarité familiale Contribution à la sociologie des configurations de justice entre les familles et l’État, dans le cas français

Despite its many meanings, “solidarity” has once again become current in French to describe macro as well as microsocial relations. Social relations in and outside the family have not always been understood as instances of solidarity. But is this solidarity the same as the one established by the welfare state? Forms of family solidarity that have risen in esteem over the past two decades are “deconstructed”. The conditions for family solidarity are examined; and conceptual paradoxes, described. This approach suggests that family solidarity, as this concept is normally used, mixes together several systems of justice that should be clearly distinguished, especially if we want to put this phrase to a judicious social use.     

Comment décrire ce qu’on ne voit pas ? Le devoir d’hésitation des juges de proximité au travail

How to describe work when much of it cannot be observed? This study of the activities of magistrates in a “natural” situation used an ethnological approach to observe cases from registration to hearings. Special difficulties cropped up during one phase: how to observe the deliberation when the judges, after having heard the parties during the contradictory phase of a penal procedure, adjourn and, among themselves, debate the case, weighing the pros and cons, before delivering a decision? The literature usually considers this “duty to hesitate” as an essential phase. But the judges in this survey sat alone on the court. Hesitations and turnarounds might occur; but doubts, inevitably an essential part of their work, arose during a phase of deliberation with oneself that left little empirically observable evidence and did not necessarily leave memories that these judges could easily bring up. How, then, to describe the “duty of hesitation” when it evaporates as we try to observe it in actual fact? This survey's strategy for responding to this situation is presented.     

Un atelier d’écriture internationale : l’OCDE au travail. Éléments de sociologie de la forme « rapport »

The writing of a “transversal” report on employment at the OECD is examined by focusing not on the finished product but, instead, on the drafting of the report. This approach allows for exploring the dynamics of power at work inside the OECD. It opens toward broader considerations about how this type of international organization produces knowledge in economics and weaves relations, throughout the long process of drafting the report, with those who requested it. This article analyzes how economic issues are assembled through a succession of intermediate studies and reshaped through an asymmetrical competition between services. By making visible the process of constructing the position of “institutional author”, this analysis repositions on new grounds the problem of “influence”, which usually arises in organizations of this sort.     

Des carrières aux parcours… en passant par la compétence

Do the social uses of the notion of competence affect operatives’ careers? A linkage between competency-based-management and careers is not to be taken for granted when competence is seen in relation to changes in work. In France, “policies of competence” entail modifying the specifications for managing the future of wage-earners, since a rationale grounded on the idea of a career yields to one based on the notion of an itinerary. Firms have supported the latter as a way to make mobility more fluid and to ensure the recognition of qualifications. However, this rationale based on occupational itineraries runs afoul of the segmented in-house labor market, which unfailingly turns an itinerary into an obstacle course. As a result, careers are “deinstitutionalized”, a trend to be related to the gradual institutionalization of “secure itineraries” with incentives coming from public employment and training policies. Invoking competence in order to make itineraries secure is part of an argument about the “destabilization of employment” that justifies delegating to individuals the management of their future and legitimates the idea that employability is to be the major counterpart for motivating wage-earners. For lack of new regulations for work throughout the life course, the rationale of an itinerary risks making the marketplace the major source of (dis)order in personal destinies.     

Les métiers flous du développement rural

Along with the notion of development, new jobs have emerged characterized by: a vague, overall definition; an ambiguity as to roles (especially in dealings with locally elected officials); makeshift statuses; and occupational itineraries that cannot be reduced to civil service careers. As this examination of their work over three decades shows, the autonomy of rural development agents has been related to a “phase of invention”, when the switch was made from rural planning to development. Role ambiguity still prevails and has even spread, owing to the social conditions of employment, to occupational itineraries. Given the cofinancing of public authorities’ “territorial actions”, we see a couple forming between elected officials, who want to take hold in an intercommunal territory, and development agents, who “create their jobs” by capturing subsidies. Over this 30-year period, a peculiar image of “fuzzy jobs” has emerged.     

Les syndicalistes de SUD-PTT : des entrepreneurs de morale ?

Since 1988 when it was founded, the Sud-PTT Union has often used law suits as a means of action in dealings with French postal authorities. Law is a full part of its practices. This is surprising coming from a union strongly attached to a protest tradition and so symbolically hostile to any form of institutionalization. What reasons underlie this orientation? The “conflict of rules” undertaken by SUD-PTT must be seen in relation to a major change in contemporary social strife. The “antagonistic posture” is no longer limited to collective actions but extends to more institutionalized strategies. Not just technical or instrumental, this sort of action aims at bringing pressure to bear on norms and, as a consequence, on the codification of social relations and on ways of living together.     

Destins professionnels des femmes ingénieures. Des retournements inattendus

In the late 1970s, a major change in techniques and a modification of the job structure opened the way for women to become engineers in the computer sciences. At the time, working conditions and policies for managing careers allowed them to benefit from ascending mobility, while still investing in family life. Given its strong growth, information technology soon became the main branch of the French economy with openings for women engineers. The downturn in employment during the 1990s and its management through “psychology-based” training arrangements restored the sexual division of labor, as women were forced out of “noble” positions in engineering and design or even out of the branch itself. These two recent trends — a feminization and then “defeminization” of reputedly “masculine” jobs — are analyzed.     

Le marché a dit. Intermédiaires financiers et managers dans le secteur électrique

The role played in the electricity industry by finance analysts, consultants and rating agencies has received too little attention in research on the liberalization of technical networks. Three arguments are brought forward. First of all, despite any rational argumentation, these intermediaries must be seen as ordinary actors with their interests, drawbacks and cognitive limits. Secondly, they have played an important part in transforming what used to be a tightly regulated industry. Their power mainly derives from their ability to influence the definition of the “right” policies and the production of information prior to decision-making. It takes the concrete form of an oligopoly power over two basic links in the information flow: big operations in the capital market and the ability to make comparisons between firms, sectors and countries and thus recommend the “right” allocation of resources. Thirdly, this quite real power does not have mechanical effects since it reflects a state of equilibrium within the firm, as the case of Suez proves. The relation between markets and firms is more interactive that it seems at first glance.     

La maladie des coûts est-elle contagieuse ? Le cas des ensembles de musique ancienne

To complete traditional explanations of why the performing arts tend to run a deficit, the case of Early Music orchestras is examined. The usual mechanisms do not suffice to explain why these institutions suffer from the “illness of costs”. Two hypotheses are combined to complete Baumol’s model. For one thing the deepening deficit of Early Music orchestras is related to their professionalization; and for another, it is explained by their being simultaneously in two markets: the concert market and the musicians’ labor market, where they have to compete with subsidized orchestras.     

Machinisme, marxisme, humanisme : Georges Friedmann avant et après-guerre

Georges Friedmann (1902-1977) is known as the founder, following WW II, of a “sociology of humanist work”. Before the war, he was a Marxist intellectual, close to the Communist Party, who admired the young Soviet Union. How this political and ideological itinerary affected his sociology of labor, has never been systematically analyzed. To do so, “machinism” (mechanization), a key concept in the first part of Friedmann’s writing, is scrutinized. This concept came not from Marx, but from Michelet’s romantic conception of history, with which Friedmann was familiar. Following the war, it was given up for the pair “natural/technical milieu”; but this shift in vocabulary did not radically alter Friedmann’s views. Questions arise about how the intellectual itinerary of the founder of French labor sociology, who was shaped by the political trauma experienced by his generation, has lastingly affected this discipline.