Contenu du sommaire : Travail : d'autres jalons. Etudes réunies et présentées par Jean-René Tréanton.

Jean-Daniel Reynaud : Regulation in organizations : autonomous regulation and controlling regulation. Do the concepts of formal organization and informal organization still have an analytical value ? The analysis of organizations has shown that the informal system does not only aim to maintain an internal social balance, but that it has also an impact on the organization external functions. Thereby, the relationships between rules enforced from outside and those which the actors try to enforce, are opposing and bargaining relationships. They are both regulation efforts, one being autonomous and the other controlling. They do not confront two once for all defined coalitions, the workers and the management, but more generally those who belong to a working group and any form of authority that tries to regulate its activity from outside. Very roughly, regulation inside an organization has two competing sources and is at nay time the result of a compromise.

Françoise Piotet : The improvement of work conditions between failure and institutionalization. Experiments of voluntary interventions do not always come to an end with their solving the problems they intended to work out; more often they do because they prove powerless in front of these problems. In order to illustrate this proposition, the author analyzes the French endeavours to better the taylorism based systems of work organization. Their failure is due to the fact that their initiators had underrated the resistance they were to be confronted to in several industrial sectors. It is also due to a series of factors analyzed by the author here. Yet it did not prevent the movement for the improvement of work conditions to leave a lasting trace upon several organizations, even if it failed to restructure the tasks.

Jean-Pierre Hassoun : Hmongs in the factory. The paper deals with the discovery of industrial world by Hmong refugees who arrived from Laos in France in 1975. Their recruitment as unskilled workers modifies their work image, leads to an intra-ethnic socio-professional equalization, and produces an inter-ethnic levelling when compared to other populations belonging to their original society; also it influences strongly their process of integration in the French society. Linking these effects with several socio-ethnic and historical characteristics leads to a better understanding of a social move which proves more complex than a mere proletarization. Finally, it shows that for certain migrant populations, organizing their acces, to the labor force is a major problem of their integration into a « modern » society.

Philippe Casella, Lucie Tanguy, Pierre Tripier : Evenness of representation against experts. An example from the Central Coordinating Committee of Apprenticeship in the Building and Public Works Trade. Having searched for forty years the evolution of the use of evenness of number between representatives of the workers and representatives of the management in round-tables of an agency whose first task is to organize the vocational training of blue collars in the Building and Public Works Trade, allows one to analyze the methods of power sharing between two categories of actors : the experts and the political men, and to stress the conclusive role of the political men in the maintaining of this education agency in its actual form and in the sticking to its specific functions ; briefly, it allows one to show how evenness of representation can generate special social forms.

Béatrice Appay : Which labour force for tomorrow ? A comparative study between France and Great Britain. The relations between work and education, too seldom investigated, gain by comparative analysis. For several years, the author has carried out surveys on the problems of vocational training and the social control of the labour force in France and in Great Britain, specially in the building industry. The research reveals that it is impossible to understand recent evolutions without taking into account each country socio-economic history, industrial structures and educational traditions. In Great Britain the Trade Unions held a strong position which has enabled them to play an important part in the training of skilled workers and the control of qualification. In France, on the contrary, the State and the educational system control the training. Reflecting multidimensional changes during the long crisis, new forms of control towards greater flexibility have been introduced. They have had a major impact on the conception and mechanisms of qualification highlighting general tendancies in the restructuring of training and the changing features of the labour markets.

Alain Touraine : The evolution of unionism in Latin America. In Latin America the Labor Movement has not developed according to the European pattern. Traditionally, the Unions' actions have been less independent and more linked to the political parties (specially to nativistic and mass movements) that in the Old World. This question follows : won't the Latin American Unionism become more independent with the development of industrialization ? Analyzing several countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and Mexico, the author shows that until now the answer has rather been negative. With a few exceptions, the Latin American Unions still rank first problems of development and national independency in their concerns. Yet international economic issues and problems due to industrial society now take a growing part in their interests which allows one to speak of the still timid but visible appearance of real Labor Movements.