On November 20, 2018, the public administrative establishment in charge of employment in France, “Pôle Emploi”, suffered a major strike in the Pays de la Loire region. During this day, 35.26% of the agents in the region were on strike according to a newspaper (Boucault, 2018). Similarly, the reasons given for this movement were multiple but focused on the threat of a reduction of 150 posts in 2019, as well as requests to stop monitoring job search, performance policy and outsourcing.
In addition to these objective explanations mentioned in this article, we will focus on the subjective testimonies provided. Indeed, some agents have had the opportunity to speak directly about the difficulties they encounter in carrying out their work, as follows: “we teach these isolated people to do without us when they need this human connection. I love people and I want to do this service, but people hate us. When you go to a wedding, you must go incognito, otherwise you get rotten, like the police” (Boucault, 2018).
If we go further in this article, we can also find a description of the typical working day of an agent interviewed. We will then pay attention to the feeling of overload and lack of human contact expressed.
In addition to the objective explanations mentioned above, there seems to be a completely different reason for the grumbling observed during this strike, a hidden meaning.
Finally, in view of all the information collected in this press article, we can ask ourselves whether, in addition to these complaints, the striking agents did not wish to alert the government and their management that their quality of life at work, which seems to be deteriorating and becoming a burden on their health at work, was not.
From a representational point of view, it is possible to think that the Pôle Emploi agents personify the system in place and are then victims of a negative social representation.
In the same vein, given the sensitive nature of the mission entrusted to Pôle Emploi, we can ask ourselves what the weight of management and its authority in decision-making on the performance objectives and the effects of these directives on the quality of life at work of staff is.
Then, the objective of this research was to explore the quality of life at work of the counsellors at Pôle Emploi and through this exploration, to be interested in the influence of Management on the Meaning of Work and Organizational Commitment. The ten participants, all of whom were counsellors or had experience as counsellors, were then subjected to a semi-directive interview in which several themes of quality of work life were investigated, and then questioned on key research concepts.
The results then show that the Management at Pôle Emploi has a polysemic definition with a predominantly negative valence by the interviewees, that it has an influence on the Meaning of Work of these counsellors, a meaning that will then be preserved by the use of strategies leading to disobedience. In addition, Organizational Commitment is also influenced by Management, illustrated by the initial wills formulated by subjects who, having exhausted all strategies for preserving meaning, no longer recognize themselves in their missions within this organization.
Key-words : quality of life at work, management, meaning at work, disobedience, organizational commitment
Words I have learned :
– Strike : grève
– Disobedience : désobéissance
– Grumbling : grogne
– Organizational Commitment : engagement organisationnel