Is there a link between workplace conflicts and pay level?

While the government is considering limiting the right to strike in transport, a study by the Ministry of Labor shows a significant relationship between the level of remuneration and the level of conflict in companies. But without establishing a cause and effect link.

It was Dares, the statistical service of the Ministry of Labor, which carried out this study on the link between conflicts at work and the level of remuneration. She used a survey conducted in 2017 among several thousand private companies with more than 10 employees.

franceinfo: What findings could be established?

Sarah Lemoine: First observation: these companies are not all in the same boat in terms of conflict, a broad concept which includes work stoppages, resignations, refusals of overtime, and of course strikes, walkouts, demonstrations .

At the time, only 3% of companies said they were affected by frequent and long-term individual and collective conflicts. But these companies are rather large, because they employ 10% of private sector employees. They are particularly present in industry and transport. The use of precarious contracts is recurrent, the union presence is strong, and salary negotiations are regularly engaged.

What is the link with remuneration?

The study shows that average hourly remuneration is higher in companies which declare long and frequent conflicts, than in those which declare none or few. The difference was 3 euros gross, for example, in 2014. And 3.30 euros in 2019. This observation is also observed for companies faced with a specific conflict on salaries, compared to those which do not. don’t have.

Should we conclude from this that employees have better remuneration in the most conflict-ridden companies?

No, says Maxime Lescurieux, sociologist at Dares. If the study does show a significant link between the level of conflict and the level of remuneration, it is just a statistical observation, it does not however establish a cause and effect link. Nothing proves, in fact, that conflict alone explains this difference of 3 euros, in a given year. This may be related to other factors that the study did not measure.

Moreover, underlines the author, if we observe the progression curve of remuneration, between 2014 and 2019, it is relatively identical between companies, with or without conflicts, with or without salary negotiations.