Companies' Adjustment Processes To The 2008 Crisis : Employment Relations Under Pressure[Modes d'ajustement à la crise : des relations professionnelles sous tensions]

This research has been done in the context of the REPONSE (2010-2011) post survey. The interviews aimed at characterizing the companies' adjustment processes to the 2008 crisis and how they have been discussed, negotiated or forced by the management direction. The methodology is built on two parts: quantitative and qualitative. The first one consists in a firms' typology grounded on the statistical exploitation of the survey matched to SINAPSE (which the information on firms' short term work uses) and DMMO (which gives information on workers moves); the second one is qualitative based on case studies of 15 companies mainly industrial. The typology shows up the specific combinations of employment and retributions adjustments of 4000 establishments of 10 or more workers of the nonagricultural sectors between 2008 and 2010. The fieldwork was done on a sample of establishments representative of the different types of adjustments combination. It gives important insights on the decision making process and how workers experienced it. Job preservation of permanent workers and the maintenance of the level of the retributions appeared to be key factors for workers to give their consent to the adjustments. But, often, these agreements relied on workers return on internal flexibility on working time, internal mobility, wages increases' rules which workers representative may find difficult to go back after the recovery. Labour relation appears to have become more and more pliable.