Contenu du sommaire : Travail, emploi, formation

Theoretical considerations regarding international comparative research on employment. The aim of this text is to introduce the main debates dealing with cross national comparative research on employment relations. Comparisons show differences and similarities, which can thus be relativized. After a critical approach to these debates, it appears necessary to build a framework which takes into account the effects of institutions and the behaviour of actors within the sphere of economic production and social reproduction.

Dynamics of professional segregation -a comparative view The Reskin and Roos model of the job queue and the gender queue provides a dynamic conception of the processes of gender segregation, desegregation and resegregation. This paper argues that when the Reskin and Roos model is applied to cross-national rather than single country studies it has to be adapted to integrate national variations in institutional systems and labour market conditions. This modification of the model sensitizes the analysis to different processes of change and different outcomes which coexist within broadly similar trends in the pattern of occupational segregation across the European Union.

A Scandinavian model of women's employment. The writer hopes to demonstrate certain specificities of the employment of women in Nordic countries by means of a comparative and empirical analysis. In Nordic countries, women's employment has many special features. Unemployment is under the level of the European Union countries. Part-time work and, more generally, atypical forms of employment are a complicated phenomenon, which does not inevitably lead to the marginalization of women in the labour market.

Work-sharing and Ecology. A many-sided rapprochement. Work-sharing is a means more and more frequently mentioned in the fight against unemployment. The proponents of this concept have been championing this idea for many years and are often engaged in the fight for the protection of the environment as well. The object of this article is to show the way in which work-sharing and ecology are tied and this by a number of hypotheses essentially based on three points : the hypotheses form and concept of economic growth, sustainable development as a societal project and finally the public policies for the internalisation of the externalities.

Insertion training. Towards new forms of employment ? Linked with the seriousness and duration of unemployment, insertion is a process now taking shape between school and employment. The transition period is becoming longer and more complex, especially under the effect of the government employment policy. Training is becoming increasingly important Insertion patterns tend to show that the process is coherent. No theoretical body of work specifically covers insertion. This is doubtless a sign that it is an emerging feature that still depends strongly on empirical attitudes. Today the diversity of insertion patterns highlights the need for progress in theoretical interpretation based on hypotheses concerning the period itself. With this in mind, it is suggested that insertion training can be considered as an occupation corresponding to ongoing changes in the employment system.

The engineer's career model in the face of technical and organizational changes in firms. The purpose of this paper is to look back from the historical conditions of the establishing, to the present renovation of the career model in industry for the profession of engineer. The large firm, in which the standard career model for the engineer emerged, has been transformed by competition, and technical and organizational change. Firms are now looking for a new coherence and are learning new conventions : we find new mobility patterns developing within the firm which could later lead to a new internal career model.

The evolution of regulations and the specificity of the disputes related to employment. The object of the study of disputes coming before the conciliation boards and concerned with certain atypical work-contracts, was to try to understand the judge's role in the legal regulation of particular forms of employment. This research has enabled us to observe that the same key points of the disputes submitted to the lower court. Judges are also largely present in the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation. The most important part of the litigation is about the rules concerning training and the breaking of contracts. Even if the creative role of the judges has been blunted, because surrounded by an ever increasing volume of legislation, the evolution of jurisprudence has contributed to the strengthening of the status of individual contracts and has consecrated the pre-eminence of the contract of indefinite duration, in conformity with the wishes of the legislators.

Towards a critic of work The changes in manufacturing and services, in the sphere of production as a whole and social reproduction in general, require us to change the way we think about work. The great variety of theories in social and human sciences that have studied work from different points of view contribute to this change. The notion "work" nowadays has such a lot of different meanings that it has become ambiguous. Thus we suggest that the ideological and political dimensions of work in manufacturing and services are now much more important than before, and illustrate many types of common links in the field of social values and behaviour, between work and unemployment, firms and family, production and reproduction.