SOCIETAL ANALYSIS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: A COMPARISON BETWEEN FRANCE AND WEST GERMANY
| Author | François Sellier,Marc Maurice |
| Date | 01 November 1979 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1979.tb00958.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1979 |
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS
OF
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: A
COMPARISON BETWEEN FRANCE AND WEST GERMANY’
MARC
MAURICE?,
AND
FRANCOIS SELLIERS
SYSTEMS of industrial relations have become institutionalised, everywhere tending to
replace the pure authority-ownership relationship which gives rise to a unilateral system
of
employer prerogatives, with an independent bilateral one. Employers’ executive
decisions, hiring, classifying, promoting, remunerating, firing and, more generally, any
decision affecting the status
or
the position
of
the employees, are regulated by agree-
ments with organised employees,
or
through representative institutions or by consulta-
tion with individuals and groups
of
employees. However, industrial relations are deter-
mined relatively independently
of
the legal institutions which formally define the
system. The true relationships between authority and subordination depend to a signifi-
cant degree, and have done
so
for a long time,
on
the type
of
co-operation in the work
place and how close this is (e.g. the relation of master and the labourer in a craft
workshop). The concrete social relationships in an enterprise are influenced at least as
much by these personnel inter-actions as by the type of ownership. The study
of
the
industrial relations system has to
be
taken out
of
the enclave
of
the formal institutional
pattern and seen as a projection
of
the effect
of
various levels
of
social relationships
upon work relations.
1
THE
CONSTRUCTION
OF
THE
ACTORS: HISTORICAL INFLUENCES
In
order to observe this projection
of
certain fundamental relationshipson
the
pattern
of
social relations at work, we shall first analyse the influence brought to bear by
‘industrial interaction’ in each society. We take as
our
definition
of
this interaction the
complex
of
relationships stemming from the industrialising and developing mode.
The French urban working class grew slowly between
1830
and
1950
out
of
a stagnant
population. It incorporated very heterogeneous groups, journeymen labourers, agricul-
tural wage earners and small-scale migrant urban and rural artisans who found them-
selves drawn together with the workers already present in the towns and cities. It
included a high percentage
of
women, not only in the traditionally female industries
such as textiles, clothing and food, but
in
others too where the lack of male workers
made it easier for them to gain access, despite the opposition
of
the men. Amongst the
industrial wage earners were few office workers during this period
of
industrialisation.
The formation
of
the German working class was almost totally dissimilar. Its growth
was sudden and enormous, since it more than doubled
in
a quarter of a century. This
growth continued despite heavy emigration, particularly to America, and while the total
population itself was rapidly expanding, from thirty-five to fifty-six millions between
1850
and
1900
(+
60
per cent): the French population rose by only
14
per cent (from
thirty-six to forty-one millions) during the same period.’
These quantitive effects are bound to have qualitative repercussions although these
are difficult to measure. The first
of
these consequences concerns the homogeneity
of
the working class.
The French working class, slow to form, has been made up of successive inputsof rural and
urban, peasants and artisan labour. Probably the latent hostility already present
in
the
countryside between farm workers and the groups
of
rural artisans persisted in the towns.3
t
Maitre de recherche au
C.N.R.S.
Laboratoire d’Economie et de Sociologie du Travail, Aix-en-
Provence.
$
Professeur, President de
1’U.E.R.
de Sciences Economiques, Universite Paris
X.
et L.E.S.T.,
Aix-en-Provence.
322
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