Ouvrier, c’est pas la classe

In 1971, Sochaux village had 3,000 inhabitants. Coaches would endlessly drive to and fro between the factories and the region’s high-rise flats built to house the 35,000 employees, and Peugeot’s world stretched out within a 60-kilometre perimeter. In those days, you entered the factory at 18 for a 30-, 40, or 50-year stretch. Later, aware of their fathers’ toil, the sons began to dream of “escaping from this image of the working-class man”. “Youngsters are incredibly ignorant of the history of the working class!” This remark by a woman production operator, with Peugeot for over 30 years, epitomizes the lack of understanding that exists between the two generations. Certainly, the young are disillusioned with school. Whilst a few become engineers, a good many quit school with no work qualifications at all. Today, however, the company only hires temporary workers or outsourced personnel, who are blithely transferred from one task to another and have no hope of career development. As the Human Resources director of this Peugeot site stresses “People just don’t think”… Yet in contradiction of this statement, we hear the men and women that used to be called workers.