Much debate and commentary on French people’s attitudes to work has been prompted by the social conflict around pension reform. These current events are the latest stage in a series of upheavals to have impacted the world of work. A large number of reforms to labour law and social relations within companies have been adopted in recent years: the Rebsamen laws in 2015, the El Khomri laws in 2016, the so-called Macron ordinances of 2017, the 2018 law on the freedom to choose one’s occupational future, the PACTE (the Action Plan for the Growth and Transformation of Businesses) in 2019, and the 2022 reform of unemployment insurance. At the same time, several crises have put companies and workers under strain: the ‘yellow vests’ in 2018, clashes over retirement legislation in 2019 and 2022-23, Covid-19 in 2020-21 and, since 2022, the Ukraine conflict and the energy and cost-of-living crisis.
These events are in addition to less visible but equally profound changes to work, including proceduralization, digitization, and the individualization of objectives and evaluation. The subject of where work figures in our lives is back on the agenda today, as witness the ‘Assizes of Work’, initiated in late 2022 by the Ministry of Labour, Full Employment and Inclusion as part of France’s new National Refoundation Council. The aim of the ‘Assizes’ is to ‘support these developments and the expectations [of the population].’ A series of studies and reports have been published in recent months to inform this debate. This article aims to take stock of the subject on the basis of various recent surveys and by asking what the possible consequences of these changes in the French population’s attitude to work may be for the business world in the coming years.
