Is France experiencing a phenomenon of “great resignation” analogous to the Great Resignation in the United States? The resignations came to historically high level : end of 2021 and beginning of 2022, 520,000 per quarter, including 90% of workers with indefinite contracts. The previous record dates from the first quarter of 2008 (510,000 resignations, including 78% of indefinite contracts).
A study by the Direction of Research, Studies and Statistics Animation (Dares, Ministry of Labor) aims to disprove the idea of an exceptional phenomenon: “The increase in the resignation rate seems to be normal, in line with the recovery after the covid-19 crisis. » In short, nothing new under the sun: when unemployment falls, employees more easily leave their jobs to find another.
But this is to forget that in 2008, during the previous peak of resignations, the contractual terminations didn’t exist By early 2022, there are 120,000 per quarter. The termination of the contract presupposes in principle the agreement of the worker.
Of course, many of these are hidden layoffs. But even assuming that only half of conventional redundancies are actually wanted by employees, there have never been so many voluntary departures in France.
With Coralie Perez (1), we have shown that, even before the health crisis, the loss of meaningof work was one of the main factors that determined departures.
Employees who do not find meaning in what they do, without social utility, without ethical coherence, without learning new skills, are much more likely than others to change jobs .
Voluntary exits are a form of rejection of alienation and subordination to capital.
To this is added what we have called environmental ethical conflict: the impression of contributing to ecological destruction through work would also cause a significant number of professional recycling or radical bifurcations; Students at AgroParisTech and other schools have recently confirmed this.
The organization of work under the control of finance (adjusted management) destroys the health of employees and ecosystems; voluntary departures are a form of denial of alienationand the subordination of capital.
Although individual and not always explicitly motivated by this refusal, they nevertheless constitute, due to their mass and their consequences on employer management, a political phenomenon.
Will the current economic downturn force employees to think twice before resigning? To put up with these harmful working conditions without protesting or walking away? Is possible. But it is doubtful that this will be enough to bury the debate about the need for another work organization. Especially if the trade union and ecological movement and the political left eventually take over.
(1) Giving meaning to work again. A revolutionary aspiration. Threshold, 2022.