When working conditions deteriorate, should you put up with it or change jobs?

If the “great resignation” did not take place and the French did not turn away from employment, must we nevertheless conclude that they fully consent to their working conditions?

The large number of resignations is explained by the increase in the active population and the resumption of economic activity after the health crisis rather than by a withdrawal from the labor market. On the contrary, the employment rate reached its highest level in August 2022 since the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) measured it, with 68.3% of 15-64 year olds in paid employment.

The health crisis has therefore not produced a massive phenomenon of “refusal of work”. On the other hand, paraphrasing the title of the last conference of the Research Group on work and occupational health (GIS Gestures) – “Change job or change job? – we observe that a body of evidence points towards a refusal of working conditions.

Increasingly strong constraints

The themes of the “great resignation” or “silent resignation” must be presented in a context of particularly poor working conditions In France. This is what we show with sociologist Dominique Méda using data from the 2021 European Working Conditions Survey.

Workers in France are more exposed to factors of physical hardship (painful postures, carrying heavy loads, repetitive movements, exposure to toxic products) than in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. The situation is no better in terms of psychosocial risk factors. For example, more than half of the respondents work within very strict or very short deadlines.

These exhibitions take place in the context of work organizations where the constraints are stronger than the resources to cope with them. So while only 36.7% of employees in France say that their colleagues help and support them; they are 54.5% in Denmark. Likewise, they are less often consulted or informed about decisions that are important to their work.

Finally, few believe that work contributes to building their health. On the contrary, nearly 39% of those questioned believe that it is threatened by their professional activity. If the physical damage is significant (back pain, pain in the lower or upper limbs), it is also very marked in terms of psychological damage: 49% of respondents say they have suffered from anxiety, compared to 30.4% on average in the European Union and 7.6% in Denmark.

Coping with poor working conditions…?

The thesis of the “Fordist compromise”, inspired byschool of regulation in economics may have suggested that poor working conditions (that is to say concerning the activity itself) could be accepted, in return for good employment conditions (salary, leave, career prospects, links social…). For authors like Robert Boyer or Alain Lipietz, the rare periods of economic stability, such as that of the 1950s to 1970s, can be explained by the adequacy between the regime of accumulation and the modes of regulation by institutions.

In keeping with the spirit of these analyses, the book published in 2012 by the Italian trade unionist Bruno Trentin, The City of Work. The left and the crisis of Fordismmaintains that some of the actors of social criticism would then have accommodated themselves to the poor working conditions produced by Taylorism and Fordism in the name of social dignity and the economic integration that these modes of organization provide to workers.

However, the works relating to trade unionism and health at work invite us to qualify the thesis according to which the organization of work has been the subject of little or no demands, for the benefit of employment and remuneration issues, including on the issues of suffering at work. We must therefore be careful not to conclude that workers would have been satisfied, during a moment historically marked by economic growth, to damage their health at work in return for better living conditions.

From the oil crisis of 1973 onwards, the narrative of the Fordist compromise struggled doubly to keep its promises. On the one hand, the outbreak of mass unemployment, the precariousness of employment and the successive economic crises introduce competition between workers which hampers their ability to carry weight in negotiations with employers. On the other hand, the improvement in working conditions that was expected from technical and organizational progress has not taken place.

In France, on the contrary, from the mid-1980s, the work intensifies in the form of an accumulation of industrial and commercial constraints weighing at the same time on increasingly varied activities. To adapt to these working conditions, individuals use different methods such as self-acceleration described by the psychodynamics of work.

Thus, in today’s parcel factories, order pickers who work under voice command “play” at making “beautiful pallets” and compete in speed with each other to hold their position. Working more to keep up, however, is not unique to the factory. For researchers in the energy industry, for example, working from home “overflow” contributes, in certain cases, to maintaining good health by allowing you to find meaning in your activity.

…or change jobs?

Alongside these accommodation practices, numerous studies show us that employees also seek to improve their working conditions. And the pursuit of this objective can involve a change of job, as we observe by analyzing the trajectories of employees whose working conditions improve or deteriorate.

According to the investigations of the Directorate for the Animation of Research, Studies and Statistics (Dares, which depends on the Ministry of Labor), between 2013 and 2016, the employees whose working conditions have improved the most are those who have changed employment or profession. Those who experience a loss of meaning at work – defined as the alliance of social utility, ethical coherence and possibilities for self-development – ​​tend to quit their job more than others.

If we consider that, in a context of job insecurity, the possibilities of changing jobs are unevenly distributed among socio-professional categories, it is interesting to question employees’ desire for change rather than their actual changes. The Challenge survey by the Center for Studies and Research on Qualifications (Cereq) shows that in 2015, a third of employees wanted to change jobs.

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The least qualified workers expressed more often than others (39%) a desire for change, mainly to secure a job that seems to them to be under threat. Employees and qualified workers who indicated that they wanted to change jobs (32%) highlighted the desire to escape highly Taylorized working conditions and to have more flexibility regarding the articulation of social time. Finally, executives (29%), insisted on their working conditions (interest in work, less spillover into personal life) and anticipate reorganizations within their company, from which they believe that their job or career could suffer.

The refusal of poor working conditions is also observed by questioning employers’ recruitment difficulties. In March 2022, a third of employees declared that they worked in companies that had improved working and employment conditions to overcome recruitment difficulties. In the context of economic recovery which followed the end of the health crisis, the balance of power between employers and employees would have shifted slightly in favor of the negotiating power of the latter.

These results confirm those of the 2019 Working Conditions survey: the employers who experience the most recruitment difficulties are also those who believe that their employees are exposed to physical or psychological hardship, in particular physical exposure, night work and unpredictable schedules and, in terms of psychosocial risk factors, work in a hurry, tensions with the public as well as the impossibility of doing quality work. However, these recruitment difficulties diminish when the employer considers that its employees fear lose their job.

A third way?

Two ways to deal with poor working conditions: put up with it or change jobs. The waves of resignations in sectors experiencing a labor shortage at the end of the health crisis underline the determining nature of the balance of power between employees and employers in the refusal of working conditions while, conversely, the fear of unemployment and fears of downgrading act as powerful levers of acceptance.

A third way would consist of transforming work organizations to make them more sustainable, by giving back bargaining power to employees through staff representative bodies. However, the disappearance of health, safety and working conditions committees (CHSCT) for the benefit of the social and economic committees (CSE) risks reducing to a minimum the discussion of working conditions.

This contribution to The Conversation France extends an intervention by the author at Jéco 2023 which were held in Lyon from November 14 to 16, 2023.