Strikes, labor disputes and company performance in France.

Summary This thesis proposes three empirical essays devoted to the analysis of strikes in France, based on recent data from establishments and companies and the use of various econometric methods. Very few quantitative studies of economic inspiration have been conducted on this subject in France, in contrast to a particularly extensive Anglo-Saxon literature on the economic analysis of strikes. The decline of unionization and collective action among employees has nevertheless led to a gradual shift in the interest of Anglo-Saxon researchers in labor economics and industrial relations towards the study of individual labor relations between employees and employers. The individualization of jobs and work relations in companies is often considered as orthogonal to the collective action of employees. The decline of strikes and other collective forms of conflict has been associated, in particular, in the Anglo-Saxon literature, with an increase in individual manifestations of conflict and in the dispersion or overall inequality of wages in firms. In this thesis, we propose an original analysis of strikes in France, in relation to these two aspects, which are characteristic of the individualization of jobs and labor relations in companies. The first chapter focuses on the relationship between the collective expression of conflict, including strikes, and the growing individual forms of conflict in French establishments, i.e. recourse to industrial tribunals and disciplinary action. The analysis conducted reveals a substitution relationship between the collective expression of conflict and the recourse to industrial tribunals by employees, while strikes and other collective conflicts tend to be associated with an increased recourse by employers to disciplinary action. The second chapter explicitly considers this relationship, more specifically between strikes and employee absenteeism, in estimating and analyzing the effect of strikes on labor productivity in French firms. The occurrence of strikes in the recent past tends to be associated with a gain in labor productivity in firms with a low frequency of strikes, provided that these strikes are associated with a lower individual expression of employee dissatisfaction (i.e. absenteeism).The third chapter examines the role of intra-firm wage dispersion in variations in strike activity across French establishments. While high wage dispersion within the workforce appears to be a brake on the collective mobilization of employees in strikes, it nevertheless appears to be at the origin of more sustained strike activity, in terms of frequency and duration of strikes, in certain establishments.