La NRT magazine, issue 8, 2016. Feature article: Corpus – What kind of "social dialogue"? by Jean-Michel Denis et al.

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The upheaval in labor relations in France continues. On the one hand, the government says it wants to modernize labor relations to make them more efficient, while seeking to circumvent centralized regulations, the Labor Code, and even the unions themselves through increased use of company referendums. On the other hand, employers feel that the reforms do not go far enough in terms of deregulation, job flexibility, and labor cost reduction. Finally, there is a somewhat divided trade union movement, which has also been undermined by anti-union practices in many companies and government agencies, such as the promotion of potential union leaders, segregation of union members, and repression. In this ongoing project, where the representativeness of employee and employer trade union organizations is also being debated, a pile of texts obscures the principle of coordination between levels of negotiation and the possibility of derogating from a higher-level agreement. Finally, successive governments have shifted the focus of collective bargaining from the sectoral level—where union representation is established—to the company level, where unions are sometimes weakened or even non-existent in smaller companies. The rejection of the Labor Law in 2016 was largely based on this refusal to transfer the venue for essential negotiations: in France, company-based unionism is much less established than in Anglo-Saxon countries, for example. The Corpus section of this issue of La Nouvelle Revue du Travail provides a detailed analysis of the significance of the priority given to company-level negotiations, based on a number of emblematic cases. It also gives a voice to two legal experts in the field, before presenting a text by J. T. Dunlop and W. F. Whyte, previously unpublished in French, on industrial relations in post-war America.
The Controversy section has some links with this Corpus, as it deals with the structural situation of unemployment in France and the possible return to full employment, questioning the nature of this full employment. Three economists with very different orientations analyze the causes of unemployment and propose solutions: from liberal solutions to those accompanying a different kind of growth, via Keynesianism, the reader is confronted with an impossible dialogue. The Champs et contrechamps section also focuses on employment, dissecting two documentaries (Pôle emploi ne quittez pas and Les Règles du jeu) on two services that help people return to work. Two models, one public, the other private, both funded by the public service, with two different approaches and unequal resources: enough to perceive the ongoing "modernization" of public services and the resulting failures for both agents and users.
The Varia section returns, in two articles, to the issue of precariousness, focusing on its foundations and then its management in two very different sectors: airport runway maintenance work, which is increasingly outsourced, and the growth of self-employment in road transport in Spain, which leads the author to defend the concept of self-exploitation. In Materials, we interview Jean, a former executive who became a cabinetmaker: what is it like to be a manager in a multinational company? With a Gadzarts education, how can you deal with the daily difficulties in the field and face CEOs and shareholders at the same time? Finally, some fifteen reviews or reading notes present books that we have enjoyed discussing.

 

Publiée le 7 June 2016