Jeunes intérimaires et ouvriers permanents en France : quelle solidarité au travail ?

Young Temporary Workers and Permanent Workers in France: What Solidarity at Work? If unemployment and job insecurity produce social inequalities, these divisions do not stop outside companies' borders and contribute to changes in work groups and productivity practices. If solidarity in the workplace stems from a common condition and shared subordination, the existence within the same workplace of different contracts and different career tracks for identical positions leads to ques-tions concerning possible forms of worker solidarity. Under threat of losing their jobs, employees are led to play the "competition among equals" game, thus con-tributing to the weakening of homogeneity within the same category. By examin-ing temporary employment, the archetypal example of job insecurity, we will explore the endogenous principles behind the process of undermining inter-category solidarity which afford new challenges to labour movements. The devel-opment of the use of temporary workers is based on a tacit policy of creating competition among workers of different statuses. Permanent and temp workers are caught up in a spiral of mutual distrust which limits their ability to take collec-tive action. The permanent employees' fear of losing their jobs is met with the bitterness of lower-status temporary workers. Because in the factory the tempo-rary workers hope to be "only passing though," avoidance and distancing between the two sets of workers constitute an obstacle to any recognition of their shared subordinate condition. As most temporary workers see their jobs as a first step towards a more permanent situation, coming out ahead is far more important to them than is improving working conditions... No doubt jobs must be at stake before a feeling of being a part of the community's future can be instilled. The segmentation of work groups via the status of different workers brings about major, rapid transformations in social relations at work by profoundly affecting the intergenerational dynamics of autonomous regulatory systems and the workings of employee resistance.