“Today the new generations aspire to have intellectual training and manual training”, specifies Jean Viard

The 100 years of the best workers in France are being celebrated until tomorrow, Sunday, in Lyon. How to promote manual work, show its full meaning? This is our “Social Question” today, with the decryption of sociologist Jean Viard.

They are butchers, bakers, tilers, gardeners and even photographers, and until tomorrow Sunday, the best workers in France are in the spotlight in Lyon, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this title with workshops, demonstrations, finals competitions. We are celebrating the 100th anniversary of this title of Best Worker in France because at the time, there was already a desire to relaunch apprenticeship, to promote manual work.

franceinfo: Why does this fight ultimately span the decades?

Jean Viard: So at the time, it was different because most of the jobs were agricultural. And so indeed, we had to increase jobs in the crafts and in industry, today, we have another challenge. France, basically, has never really been a great industrial country. We have been a country built on education, schools, school certificates, and royal status was to be a civil servant or in a service company. And then on the side, there was the peasant world. There were two big worlds after all.

And then, we developed the industry a lot, with hands coming from abroad, so very simple jobs. We increasingly simplified assembly line work, so in our factories, there were Belgians, Moroccans, Spaniards, Italians, that was the French industry of the post-war period. In fact much of this workforce was immigrant. And little by little, we tried to eliminate the factories, often hoping to make the immigrants disappear or have much cheaper people on the other side of the world.

And then today, it’s more like that, since covid, the world from an economic point of view, we realized that having only one factory on the other side of the world which delivers us, if there is a war, or Covid, we have nothing left. Look at semiconductors with Taiwan. So we said to ourselves: we have to rebuild local industry. Second thing, tertiary sector professions. What do you say to your kid? If you work in social security or in an administration, mom, dad works, I go to work, it’s abstract! If you say I’m a baker or I’m a mechanic, or I’m a painter, the kid sees his father work, sees the result, basically, the work is concrete.

And I think new generations have an aspiration to do both. Today, we come back to a much smarter idea. Every individual must have intellectual training, manual training. This is where we are heading. And we created 800,000 apprentices, there were 300,000 five years ago. But then, we did a huge amount of learning.

We promote manual work, apprenticeship, but we clearly see that there is a problem. Doesn’t that really work well, since we keep hearing about the lack of labor?

Yes, but it’s not the same thing, because among the 800,000 apprentices we have in France at the moment, who are counted as active, they do not have student status since they are in alternation. So they are among the French who work. And there is a shortage of labor in a certain type of job, often it is more linked to the fact that these are highly constrained professions. But it’s true that since Covid, there are lots of people who have been paid for several months to be at home, some have divorced, but many have realized that their life was a hassle, their housing etc. ..

Our lifestyles, our desires have changed, but this Covid crisis has also pushed some French people to leave their office jobs to move into manual work, because there was a form of quest for meaning too?

But of course ! You know in the United States, there are 48 million Americans who quit their jobs after Covid, 48 million. Well, okay, they have more than 130 million assets, but it’s almost a third, so it’s even stronger than us. But in our country, it is a phenomenon that exists, and I think it will develop. On the one hand, because on the other hand, we have houses where we want to have parquet floors, things that are a little unique. So there is a whole demand for meaning, in our homes in particular.

And then on the other side, a demand for meaning from those who work. “There I am, I made the terrace, look at that, it’s me who did it”, etc., give meaning to one’s life, and that this meaning is part of an ecological revolution. And then, it must be said, we are in a society of free time, we work approximately 10% of the hours we live on this earth. There is undoubtedly a way of necessity to remobilize, not by working more, in hours, but by having a commitment to the work, because the work is what links me to others.