To analyse. One day, Medhy Addad and Christophe Lagarde, welding trainers in Vierzon, got tired of hearing and noticing that there was a lack of qualified welders. They looked for ways to enhance this profession. And why not a French championship? The competition had fallen into disuse, they bought back the rights. To mount the event, which took place successfully in early October, they did not rely on the Union of Metallurgical Industries and Trades, a powerful employers’ federation, or on another caped representative of the profession. But on the Welding 2.0 online community, which has 80,000 subscribers on YouTube and 25,000 on Facebook.
“It’s a force that allowed us to put this together on our own, explains Mehdy Addad, for whom the actions carried out so far by other bodies have been misguided. We do not pose as competitors. We just want to act our way to promote our profession, as close as possible to welders and their daily work ”.
Social networks have, in recent years, facilitated the emergence of other collectives, corporatist in the first sense of the term, that is to say bringing together employees around the practice of their profession. Horizontal discussions, between peers, exchanges on know-how, risk, constraints, sometimes salaries. Of the ordinary, of the concrete.
Facebook group “You know you’re a hotel receptionist when …” has 19,000 members, “The life of the servers”, 12,000 members. “The invisible force of home helpers” is followed by 5,500 people. Created at the start of the first confinement, this page first served as an outlet for the distress of professionals who, without a mask, had to continue caring for vulnerable patients. “Reading that on Facebook did me a lot of good”, “We realize that we are not alone in going through this! “, they explained to World.
Virtual exchange frees speech and allows you to count yourself. “The home help sector is understaffed. So we are in a strong position. This is what we try to tell women who are afraid of being fired if they protest ”, details Aurore Artigue, one of the administrators of the page. “Welders must be aware of their value”, Mehdy Addad also pleads.
“Multidisciplinary grouping”
The Facebook page then becomes a vector of information andempowerment, in other words, it promotes the ability to act. “ In order for workers to be able to defend their rights, they must first know them ”, recalls Eric Louis, administrator of the “Angry rope access workers” page and co-founder of the association of the same name, created at the end of 2018 after several fatal accidents and the observation of a total absence of accident data in this profession without a specific collective agreement , often carried out on an interim basis, by isolated professionals.
You have 50.9% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.