“Accept or Quit” : The Bases of Consent to Work in a Press Center

Résumé 0

The conditions of submission at work in a press mail sorting centreThis article aims to study the adaptation to constraints of “market flexibility” of a press mail sorting centre, a subsidiary of the French Post Office (La Poste). We will also examine the repercussions on workers employed there. Starting from fieldwork as a participant-observer in the sorting office in the Northern suburbs of Paris, we show the interaction between social characteristics of employees and new modes of “participative” management (aimed at individualization of work experiences in a context of labour intensification). Despite the social homogeneity of the workgroup management policy succeeds to assure at the same time the breaking up of workers and make them more cooperative. Comradeship at work plays a determinant role in the mobilization of employees, based on modes of sociability between “young people” from popular areas in the region. But this mobilization does not give rise to organized forms of collective resistance. The oriented policy of the company justifies itself by claiming to offer initial work experience to “young people in difficulty”, leading them later to better paid jobs. But as the young people stay in this kind of job longer and longer, the contrary results are produced à‚­ the young people’s paper qualifications are devalued and, in view of the state of the local job market, the employees tend to want to hold on to their job at any cost.