Serving the company to better defend employees?

Résumé 0

Based on an investigation carried out at Decathlon, a major retail store distributing sporting goods in France and worldwide, this article sheds light on a specific style of trade unionism that we call company trade unionism. This type of unionism takes shape at the crossroads of institutional arrangements promoting social dialogue at company level and the legitimist attitudes of employees who take on the role of employee representatives. How does company unionism develop? What values does it defend, and to what uses does it lend itself? Does it imply the absence of any form of conflict in the workplace? To answer these questions, the investigation draws on material (interviews, observations, documents) gathered as part of a collective research project on forms of citizenship at work. Interviews with some thirty union officials and employee representatives, affiliated to various trade unions (CFTC, UNSA, CFDT and CGT) or unaffiliated, enable us in particular to grasp certain factors, little studied to date, of this phenomenon: the existence of employees’ allegiance to the corporate project.