Between Keeping Your Head Down and Trying to Get Noticed: Agency Workers in French Car Assembly Plants

Abstract

Numerical flexibility is commonly promoted as a driver of employment growth. However, contingent work is frequently associated with "bad jobs", particularly for those in low skilled occupations. Agency work is a common and growing form of contingent work and is often promoted as a tool for facilitating the labour market integration of young workers. In France, young agency workers make up a significant part of the labour force within car assembly plants. Studies have shown that these workers have harsher working conditions than permanent co-workers and are subject to a "despotic" factory regime. However, the triangular relationship, which frames the agency contract, may give rise to a more complex outcome in which the aspiration for stable employment mediates the coercion of labour market vulnerability.

The resistible rise of the temporary employment industry in France

“…This assessment of the human cost of agency labour is also supported by recent studies of agency labour in French auto-manufacturing (Gorgeu and Matthieu, 2011;Purcell et al, 2011;Purcell, 2014). Furthermore, it is in those sectors, such as auto-manufacturing and construction, where agency labour is integral, large scale and deployed strategically for its flexibility that, as a pathway into other employment it is now obligatory, prolonged and uncertain.…”

“…Successive governments tolerated the widespread use of agency labour beyond legal boundaries (Purcell et al, 2011). This was principally due to the tacit acceptance by the PS and some trade unions of the need for greater labour market flexibility to get young workers into employment, even if under the guise of pursuing labour market flexicurité (Milner, 2012).…”

“…As the use of agency labour to fill entry-level jobs became an industry-standard in auto-manufacturing (Viprey, 2002), this created a locked-in relationship with TEAs providing access to a permanent pool of agency workers (Gorgeu and Matthieu, 2009). This in turn erected a major barrier to stable employment, especially for young workers in regions heavily dependent on auto-industry jobs (Purcell et al, 2011).…”

“…These high rates at the sectoral level give substance to the variegated capitalism thesis by illustrating the strategic, tailored responses of local, meso-level actors to the pressures of global capitalism. In the case of the auto sector, TEAs provided employers with the means to deviate from institutional norms (Purcell et al, 2011), demonstrating their role as 'rule makers' as well as 'rule takers' (Zhang and Peck, 2016: 57) as they engage in localised practices of mutual interdependence with other actors, the outcome of which can be incremental systemic change. The following sections illustrate this process by charting how key actors in the French TEA sector have engaged in practices and alliances that have facilitated their liberalising agenda since their emergence in the post-war years.…”

“…These studies focus on the social processes by which agencies 'simultaneously construct and inhabit' (Strauss and Fudge, 2014: 10) their markets and regulatory contexts, often confronted by hostile labour movements and reluctant governments, as was the case to varying degrees in Norway (Jordhus-Lier et al, 2015), France (Purcell et al, 2011), Germany and Belgium (Pulignano et al, 2015).…”