Contenu du sommaire : Grèves. Automne 1995

The November 1996 truck drivers' strike in France fits into a long series of labor conflicts in the trucking business. To understand it, these conflicts must be related to the systems of public interventions regulating this business over the past 20 years. The pattern of these conflicts is sketched for the 1970s and the 1990s. It is hypothesized that a change took place from a self-sustained cycle for externalizing regulatory costs as part of a mixed rail-road freight transportation policy to a cycle for internalizing costs as part of a policy favoring freight transportation by road rather than rail. It is shown how and why the conflicts inherent in the new social, political and economic conditions laid down for freight transportation reflect changes in (and a fragmentation of) the «logics» of public interventions and of divisions among actors in trucking.

How does the December 1995 rail strike stand out from other labor conflicts at the SNCF (the French national rail company) ? The division existing within occupational categories and among unions was overcome by the will to defend a status and retirement systems. The mechanical effects of these vested labor interests led to a political strike for defending the company as a public service. The transformation of a bread-and-butter strike into a political movement led the unions to lay hold of the new issues that could eventually destabilize the arrangements based on such vested interests.

About specific categorial interest in the December 1995 labor movement Out of a survey in depots of the RATP (the Parisian Transit Authority), questions arise about the specific categorial interest that characterized the fall 1995 strikes. These interests were strengthened by intense feelings of a crisis and of weakness. Mechanics identified themselves both with wage-earners as a whole and with the defense of public services. This universalist outcome of special interests can be counterbalanced by a more national definition of wage-earners. The universalist pretensions

Public service and lower-class suburbs, a coproduction on crime : The Parisian Transit Authority's bus network — On the basis of empirical research conducted on bus lines in the northern suburbs of Paris, the problem of insecurity is taken to be not so much a measurable statistic as the result of a coproduction out of both drivers' and passengers' experiences. Following a presentation of statistical indicators and a typology of passengers' beha¬ viors, the problem of insecurity is approached from the inside by. successively examining the following issues : ticket prices and cheating (free riders) ; the bus driver's job as well as the contrast between reality and bureaucratic rules ; and the inse¬ curity of the personnel, who have adopted a defensive group position (and even "poor white " reactions). The resentment of the lower classes, who see themselves negatively as excluded from society, joins up with the resentment of the drivers. When these two resentments meet inside a bus, they coproduce situations of insecurity.

Constructing a strike 's legitimacy : The role of general assemblies at the Lyon Train Station in Paris This study of the general assemblies held by railworkers at the Lyons Station in Paris during the 1995 strike analyzes how speakers took the floor and shows how this act mobilized personal experiences and strong occupational identifications. Union membership proceeds from both these factors. These assemblies did not play the role that «worker coordinations» had during the 1980s. They did not directly question the unions' role. On the contrary they represented a return to labor unionism.

The events in the fall of 1995 in France represented both a series of protests from specific categorial interest in the labor movement and a general movement that : rejected the government's economic policy, was suspicious of the country's elites and sought to defend the welfare system. The many sociological interpretations made of this movement are presented herein.