What can businesses bring to priority neighborhoods?
This was the title of the seventh program recommended by the Borloo report, entitled Living Together, Living the Republic to the Fullest. Rejected in 2018 by the President of the Republic, the document was brought back into the spotlight by the riots that followed Nahel's death. In the face of economic hardship in working-class neighborhoods, the issue of employment is described as "the mother of all battles." It is, in fact, "the most glaring manifestation of inequality, the one that blocks the path to the future and undermines confidence in ourselves and in our Republic."
Ousama Bouiss, University of Montpellier
"Everything depends on business and employment."
The result of a joint effort involving local authorities, associations, businesses, and many other stakeholders, the report highlights the complementary relationship between the fight against poverty, work, andbusiness. Furthermore, it identifies the latter as the central driver of change in the lives of these "6 million inhabitants" who "live in a state of relegation and sometimes even amnesia from the nation, occasionally awakened by a few news stories."
Employment contract, social contract
In conclusion to his book Pourquoi travailler ?(Why Work ?), Anthony Hussenot, professor of management sciences at the University of Côte d'Azur, reminds us:
"Work is a complex activity" [...], never entirely alienating and solely remunerative, nor entirely free and emancipatory.
He identifies five main roles that work plays in our lives.
It plays an economic role through the income we derive from it, which should enable us to provide for our needs; a social role in that it "enables individuals to position themselves in society"; and an identity role because "the way we speak, behave, and our beliefs, but also, to a certain extent, our political and economic ideas, our cultural tastes, etc., are partly the result of our relationships with our professional environment." It also has a legal and political role, as work is a "social contract" between the individual, the employer, and the state. It seals the "promise" that in exchange for the work they do, individuals can live decently, in particular by having access to consumer society, being protected by the state, and being able to hope for a better future. Finally, it fulfills a political role through which we participate in the production and reproduction of the systems in which we live.
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The mere description of these roles is enough to understand why work is "the most glaring manifestation of inequality." When wages are not enough to live on, when the social status conferred by a profession is symbolically and socially devalued, the social contract is weakened because work does not fulfill its "promise." With unemployment rates two to three times higher than average in working-class neighborhoods, it is even a form of exclusion from this social contract that is at stake.
However, having a job is not enough.
The solutions proposed by the Borloo report are based on two main approaches: training through apprenticeships, work-study programs, and support, and mobilizing companies to create jobs that favor people from working-class neighborhoods.
However necessary and relevant these proposals may be, they are not enough. We must also ensure that work fulfills its role by enabling everyone to earn a satisfactory income, meet their individual aspirations, and contribute to the reproduction of a political system that conforms to the democratic ideal. Since businesses contribute to the political and social integration of citizens, simply "having a job" is not enough. Work must also guarantee the possibility of a dignified life.
The preamble to the Constitution of the International Labor Organization states:
"Universal and lasting peace can only be founded on the basis of social justice."
However, as Alain Supiot, a specialist in labor law, points out in The Power of an Idea (The Power of an Idea):
"There are working conditions that involve injustice, misery, and deprivation for a large number of people, which generates such discontent that universal peace and harmony are endangered [...]. This abandonment of [social justice] leads to a dramatic increase in inequality, the sinking of the working classes into precariousness and decline, and mass migration of young people driven by poverty. This in turn gives rise to anger and violence in many forms and fuels the return of ethno-nationalism and xenophobia."
By placing social justice back at the heart of the debate on the role of business and work, we can counteract the harmful effects of neoliberalism, which contributes to the isolation of individuals. In contrast to discourses that promote the ideal of individual success based on the accumulation of material wealth or symbolic domination, the democratic ideal of social justice calls for solidarity as a necessary condition for freedom and equality.
The tools are available
Therefore, democratizing the enterprise does not only mean promoting dialogue but, more importantly, subordinating the criterion of performance to the criterion of justice. Similarly, democratizing work does not only mean "creating jobs." It also means, in the words of the Declaration of Philadelphia, which defined the goals and objectives of the International Labor Organization in 1944, promoting "the employment of workers in occupations where they can give full play to their skills and knowledge and contribute most to the common good."
By approaching the issue of work and business through the prism of the fight against poverty and the affirmation of democratic principles, we are invited to rethink our ways of thinking. Working-class neighborhoods offer us a valuable mirror reflecting the limitations and dangers of our economic system. It is no longer a question of placing society at the service of business, but rather of placing business at the service of society. From a normative point of view, it is a question of updating democratic principles and values everywhere, especially in the places where we spend most of our time, such as businesses.
Moreover, as the "Borloo report" states, "we are capable of addressing most of these issues." Indeed, research on democratic organizational models, reflections on the relationship between ecological transition and new professions, and proposals for labor law reform are all available to us. However, in order to take advantage of these solutions, experiment with them, and implement them, we must first leave behind "the anxieties of our history, the accumulated, piled up, sedimented, ineffective, contradictory, scattered, abandoned mechanisms where the announcement of spectacular figures takes the place of policy."
Ousama Bouiss, PhD student in strategy and organizational theory, University of Montpellier
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