The unbearable subordination of employees
Danièle Linhart
Labour sociologist, Emeritus Research Director at the CNRS*, member of the GTM-CRESPPA* laboratory, UMR-CNRS-Universities of Paris 8 and Paris 10
* CNRS: Centre National de la Recherche scientifique (National Centre for Scientific Research), GTM-CRESPPA: Genre, Travail, Mobilités –Centre de Recherches Sociologique et Politiques de Paris (Gender, Work, Mobilities – Paris Centre for Sociological and political Research)
« We need to rethink the relationship of subordination in the world of labour»
New methods of organisation and employee involvement, increasingly disrupting and deleterious!
In her sociological analysis “l’insoutenable subordination des salariés” (the unbearable subordination of employees), Danièle Linhart decrypts the employer’s ability to constantly revive his domination, in order to preserve, or even sublimate, a subordination link that is becoming increasingly personalised and intrusive, and which compromises any collective ability of employees to seize the true challenges of work.
This situation enables corporate managements to establish and perpetuate their control over their employees in an ever more skilful and sophisticated way. In stimulating and intensifying the desires that sustain their relationship to work, they manage to impose new methods of organisation and employee involvement that are increasingly destabilising and deleterious.
R&D advocates a management based on trust and the values of the European Union. This is why R&D calls on our Institution to refocus the Human at the heart of Human Resources management by considering the content and meaning of work, career prospects and recognition for all categories of staff, a policy of prevention of health and psychosocial risks, the working environment as well as equal opportunities.
In a world where the link of subordination remains the key point in the company, what are the avenues to consider for abolishing this archaic system and leave room for collective intelligence?
R&D called on Danièle LINHART, to provide us with her expertise!