La branche entre cadrage national et autonomie d’entreprise : le cas de la négociation d’un accord télétravail de branche

In France, teleworking has been the subject of numerous agreements, following a top-down hierarchy of joint negotiation levels. At the European level, a first framework agreement was concluded in 2002. At the national level, a first interprofessional national agreement (ANI) was signed in 2005. At the company level, it was mainly in the 2010s and even more so after 2020 – during and after the Covid-19 health crisis – that many agreements were concluded. At the sector level, however, very few agreements have been produced. If the Labor Law and the 2017 Macron ordinances give primacy to company-level agreements over sector-level agreements on this topic, one can then question what the stakes might be in negotiating and producing a teleworking agreement at this level. This article therefore examines the dynamics of negotiating a sector-level teleworking agreement (in the insurance sector), testing a recently defended thesis according to which social dialogue is now exercised under increased "control" from the State and employers. Based on this case of negotiated teleworking, it analyzes the tensions that the national and company levels exert on the sector (2). It then notes that, despite these tensions, the sector-level agreement constitutes a space that carries two types of internal and external stakes: producing a framework agreement internally; and promoting the sector externally (3). Overall, it appears that, while the sector is a level of negotiation whose usefulness is rather questioned by some of the negotiators representing employees, it is, conversely, defended by employers as a space for producing resources for companies in the sector.