Pacifying the social: Creating the French citizen worker, 1968–1975

Abstract

Faced with strikes that shook the government during the French social crisis of 1968, French employers' associations feared that the economic and political crisis would destabilize both firms and factories. Employers regarded the strike wave as a movement that could not be resolved by conventional collective bargaining but as a crisis that demanded a new social settlement. The negotiations around job classification were viewed as one of the tools of this new social settlement. In the steel industry they endured for seven years, from autumn 1968 to 21 July 1975. The negotiation of the new job classification was led by the employers' Union of Mining and Metallurgical Industries (UIMM) and involved negotiations with the Federation of Metalworkers (CGT), the General Federation of Metallurgy (CFDT), the Federation of Christian Trade Unions of Metallurgy (CFTC) and the Federation of Executives, Master Technicians (CGC). In 1972, the employers accepted the principle of a common classificatory grid applicable to all workers, including technicians and supervisors. This evolution was driven by legislation that wanted all workers to be able to pursue a career within a particular firm. The government wanted to pacify workers by integrating them into consumer society through the provision of life-long careers. Career management as a means of restoring long-term social order in French factories produced a form of governmentality. Statistical definitions of skill were projected outwards from the state to the sector, and then to the firm. Labour statistics shared a common logic, language and authority. Governmentality was operationalized through managerial tools to simultaneously create new populations and individuals to be known and governed. Paradoxically, the universal career system was designed to be dynamic, to create both active liberal individuals and a population rendered docile.