Le CSE et ses commissions : reconfigurer les instances représentatives pour rationaliser le dialogue social ?

In companies with more than 300 employees, the operation of commissions within social and economic committees (CSEs) was significantly disrupted by the labour reforms of September 22, 2017. The reforms led to a change in the organization of discussions between employee representatives and management. This article explores the extent of this change in the operation of employee representation bodies, and shows how, in large companies, union representatives and employee relations managers have appropriated the new legal framework to configure and define the operation of CSE committees. We observe that negotiators seized the opportunity to configure CSE committees, either to maintain existing arrangements and routines despite the change in the legal framework, or to innovate and invent new ways of operating. However, beyond the differences observed between companies, there is a common turn in managerial initiatives: the streamlining of procedures and discussions within the CSE. This raises a series of issues and tensions that are particularly apparent in the case of the health, safety and working conditions committee (CSSCT). Yet, we argue that despite managerial expectations of making social dialogue more fluid, the introduction of CSEs has led to the paradox of a more time-consuming simplification.