Conflits d’activité, conflits sociaux

This paper discusses the relationship between temporality and conflictuality based on a research on French telephone operators, a feminized professional category at the bottom of the scale of the PTT (French public administration of postal services and telecommunications). In the 1950s and 1960s, their social status was marked by two types of conflicts : an activity conflict and a social conflict. The telephone operators’ confrontation with rationalized worktime encouraged an activity conflict which triggered health problems. The interpenetration of various simultaneous tasks exposed them to numerous requests in a tightened temporality. Furthermore the operators had great difficulty to juggle the accumulated constraints of their professional time and personal time engaged with family demands. Therefore the telephone operators were implicated in a social conflict, demanding a reduction in working hours, as well as the business conflict. This was made possible by a feminist CGT labor union which demanded a five-days week with the slogan "having the time and the means to live" in order to rally the telephone operators to the union cause.