Gestions de salariés : métiers et flexibilités (Lyon, XIXe-XXe siècles)

Abstract

Abstract In social history, the history of works is developping and is refining the social categories. The history of works, but also the history of male and female workers, even if, regarding women, the questions are not taken for granted. It also concerns the history of the workplace, that is to say a firm in the large meaning of the word, composed of both public and private units such as factories, trade, offices, shops and workshops. Using research on Lyons which consist in the study of files on the company staff, we aim to show some of the nowdays debates on employment must be thought in a long term period and form part of slow mutation in terms of status of women and men employees. As soon as the 19th century, and parallel to the progress of employment law which set maximum hours threshold and made day off compulsory, the both state and private entrepreneurs employ substitue workers who benefit neither the garantee of a steady job nor most of the social system benefits. In all sectors, in front of steady and normal jobs, there are numerous flexible jobs that are probably the condition for the former one to last: unofficial teachers who are growing the teachers 'rank coming from the Ecole Normale, employees corking two days a week that allow full-time employee to take day off, immigrants workers first laid off in case of economic crisis, labourer helping the highly qualified workers. These ways of employment are very old but scarcely studied. However, they gave rise to the contemporary laws which, for exemple, legitimate the fixed-term contract.