The book. What have professional relationships become? This is the question that contributors to the 21e number of The New Journal of Labor (NRT) published by Erès editions. Throughout the pages of this publication specializing in the sociology of work, “the authors have been scrutinizing the profound transformations of professional relations for three decades”. They are numerous and lead, they believe, to a “widespread deregulation”.
To understand it, we must look at the changes that have often violently affected companies, their activity, their organization. “Globalization of production and exchanges (…)remoteness of decision-making centers from workplaces (…)modification of labor law by the States… » The transformations at work have upset the world set up after the war, signing “the end of the Fordist compromise model”.
The company has become a “nebula”, say Meike Brodersen and Esteban Martinez, sociologists from the Free University of Brussels. It frequently involves subcontractors, temporary work agencies or self-employed workers. ” [Une] casualization and [une] diversification of employment at the source of the weakening of the trade union actor”, they explain. This is a factor in the weakening of industrial relations systems. “The transformation of power structures within the company” is another, according to the two authors, at a time when “identification of management decision-making centres” becomes more uncertain.
A “democratic deficit”
Observed for several decades, this break-up of work collectives and this distancing of the figure of the employer were not born with the platform economy, insist the authors. They preceded her. But the book emphasizes that the development of digital platforms (transport, meal delivery, etc.) has significantly accentuated the transformations at work.
What generate a “democratic deficit”related to “the concealment of power relations and [à] the erasure of the employer in his role of employer interlocutor within companies withdrawn into their intermediation function”, explain the authors. They see there “algorithmic governance”who “obscures real power relations, disembodies management and poses a considerable challenge to the organization of resistance on the part of employees”.
The review shows how the “center of power relations” has moved over time: it “is no longer the employment relationship, but economic dependence”, say the authors. They also underline the extent to which these developments challenge unions and make it difficult “the organization of resistance”. Associated with “liberal reforms”these transformations have a major consequence: they “generate an economic and social situation in which wage power is less and less strong in relation to employer power”explains Camille Dupuy, sociologist from the University of Rouen.
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