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Industrial relations are both a system of practices and rules in labour and employment relations and a field of research study For several years, these two fields have been undergoing a profound destabilisation, interpreted by some as a crisis. To understand the reasons for this, it is necessary to look back at the conditions and modalities of their constitution. But rather than concluding that they have disappeared, the article insists on a reconfiguration, which is also that of the productive models, institutions and actors involved.

Industrial relations refer to both a set of practices and rules governing labour relations and a research field investigating the latter. Their development went hand in hand with the implementation of post-war Fordist capitalism. Rapid changes in the working worlds and the questioning of institutions and work regulations for several decades, both in the Anglo-Saxon world and in Europe, have logically led to a decline of the paradigm of industrial relations. But how should we consider this present situation? As a disappearance or as a recomposition?

Driven by the demands of their members and the legalization of employment relations, trade unions have engaged in processes of internalization of the law in the form of internal legal services. The legal professionals employed in those services have to work in organizations where forms of political rationality predominate and may conflict with the professional logic they represent. This article examines the conditions under which they exercise their profession between expert knowledge and militant logic and questions the hybrid professionalization process they manage to build.

In late summer 2015, two published texts marked a significant move to promote collective bargaining and “social dialogue” in companies. On 17 August, France’s so-called “Rebsamen” law was enacted, aimed at “improving the efficiency and quality of social dialogue in companies”. In early September, Jean-Denis Combrexelle, a former Director-General for Work, submitted a report featuring a long list of proposals for galvanising negotiations and “broadening [their] scope”. Some fed into the spring 2016 Work bill, who first draft met with opposition from all French employee unions.To understand everything at stake in these texts along with the perspectives they have opened up, two legal specialists in this field agreed to be interviewed by us. Their transcripts offer an overview of some major changes affecting company health and safety committees, the agreement to host single worker delegations, worker representation in micro-enterprises, anti-union discrimination and professional equality. It also looks at the major transformations that the French industrial relations system is going through at present, with Sylvaine Laulom and Cécile Nicod specifically highlighting the fact that widespread support for collective bargaining today can mainly be attributed to the assumption that this will produce certain outcomes enhancing business competitiveness. They also note that the debate about the simplification of labour law masks ongoing developments relating to “simpler obligations for employers, meaning a re-balancing of their power vis-a-vis employees, something hiding both sides’ real negotiating positions”.