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The wage-labour nexus: rediscovering why its issues are so central

Deadline for submission of papers: 15 April 2024. Coordination: Jonathan Marie and Sandrine Michel.

Labour-related questions lie at the heart of current events and are working their way up social science research agendas. While some topics have always drawn attention (unemployment, underemployment, etc.), many issues have gained prominence since the health crisis: job quality, inadequate wages and questions about purchasing power, pay gaps between men and women and within firms, matters relating to platform work, working times, remote working, the individualization of work, the repercussions of the development of artificial intelligence, the revival and transformation of social or trade-union struggles, and so on.

This Call for Papers looks to publish contributions with an interest in labour and employment, more specifically to ascertain whether new industrial relations are emerging and how they can be understood in keeping with the editorial line of the Revue de la régulation. This issue will be a continuation of research previously published by the Revue de la régulation (Ballon et al., 2023; Girard et al., 2022; Erb and Reynaud, 2021; Berthonnet and Clos, 2019; Mazuyer 2013; Michel and Vallade, 2007). To be included in the issue, contributions may cover any geographical area, just as they may take the form of theoretical papers or of macro, meso or micro analyses.

The specificity of institutionalist approaches is to situate their theoretical process in the long term and in the analysis both of changes and of levels of conflict.

Accordingly, the regulationist analysis of the wage-labour nexus historicizes labour as a permanent component of capitalist production relations and shows that labour changes with the constraints of accumulation and levels of social conflict (Boyer 2002). The wage-labour nexus describes, for a given time, an alignment of labour organization, workers’ ways of life and the ways in which they are reproduced. As such, it corresponds to the labour side of relations of production. The other side, capital, is represented by accumulation regimes. Regulationist Theory has shown that a prevailing form of wage-labour nexus corresponds to each of those regimes. Being central to past accumulation regimes, the flexibility of wage and employment levels was also periodically their main limiting point (Boyer 1978).

The study of the determinants and effects of changes in the functional distribution of income is central to post-Keynesian analysis, too (Berr, Monvoisin and Ponsot (eds), 2018). Within that analysis, the substantial shifts observed in that distribution and the increasing inequality in wages are major determinants of the 2008 global financial crisis and the macroeconomic dynamics observed (Stockhammer, 2012). The diversity of growth regimes can also be explained by the differences in operation of employment markets or by the structural characteristics of the economies examined. Moreover, in this strand of thought, inflation is analysed as the consequence of the distributional conflict between capital and labour (Lavoie, 2022), in a tradition in which inflation is of the cost-push type (Bastian et al., 2021).

In conjunction with the accumulation of capital, the dominant forms of the wage-labour nexus follow on from one another historically by hybridization, within a situation of social conflict capable of tweaking the employment-framing institutions or, more radically, of founding new settlements. The changing pattern of labour, employment and the wage-labour nexus may be investigated in this thematic dossier particularly through two key lines of enquiry:

1. Documenting the long decline of the Fordist wage-labour nexus (Aglietta, 1998) is a first issue in this Call for Papers. That decline has helped to impart fresh impetus to the competitive determinants of wages and employment and has probably thrown up new components of the employment relation. And yet, it does not seem to have given rise to a coherent wage-labour nexus. Why is that?

  • The fluctuations of the industrial reserve army have made it possible to reboost the flexibility of wages and employment. To achieve this outcome, the centre of gravity of the employment relation and its norms has shifted away from national – or sectorial – collective actors and towards firms, or has even been caught up in a movement of individualization of the wage-labour relationship (Perez et al., 2015). The unpicking of the Fordist employment norm has provided scope for renewing a form of organization of labour under the constraint of the employment crisis, that is now partly consolidated in a re-write of employment law.

  • The current inflationary context is driving substantial wage claims. While the legitimacy of those claims is not generally contested, the threat of reactivating the price-wage spiral is usually raised as an objection whereas the price-profit spiral certainly does not come in for enough discussion. Are those wage claims liable to break the long period of wage austerity that began in the 1980s and that has distorted the sharing of value added to the advantage of income from capital?

  • National employment markets have undergone reforms designed to make them more flexible. The reforms promote individual initiatives in unequal employment relations. In France, the reforms make firms the focus for negotiations and rely on the prerogatives of works councils for firms with more than 11 employees, where workplace conditions presuppose a non-existent expertise and genuine difficulties in unionization. Yet unemployment and job insecurity, developing since the 1970s, had already seen the return of competitive mechanisms in setting wages and conditions.

  • Unemployment and job precarity have contributed to the rise of miscellaneous activities on the borderline of salaried employment or on the other side of that line. The social and solidarity economy supports some of those activities, sometimes involving the question of the control of the means of production by workers themselves through cooperatives (Lamarche & Richez-Battesti, 2023). Uberization or platformization of employment support others (Montalban 2023). Platformization concerns an offer of activities from e-tech firms. Supported by self-employment, it ties in (rather low) income from business activity with individuals being entirely free in the apportionment of their working hours. It relies on transferring the financing of capital and welfare risks to the worker.

  • The health crisis has accelerated emerging questions about the salaried work relationship or the meaning of work (Supiot 2019). These questions trigger rejections of the ways in which work is organized. For the time being, the responses have been above all of an individual nature. Although the manifestations of it are hazy and miscellaneous, such as the great resignation, quiet quitting, and so on, their statistical depth can be readily perceived. At the same time, there has been a revival of trade unionism in France, Europe and the United States. The results obtained in terms of demands may be significant or, on the contrary, non-existent and the diagnostic level matters.

2. More structural queries about work, about its new make-up, about features liable to bring about alternative industrial relations may have attracted less attention (Michel 2023). A space beyond wage-employment may be in the offing. On the confused and shifting boundaries, the question of a new “social relationship of activities” (Laurent & Mouriaux 2008) may be raised; clarifying this question underpins a second issue in this call for papers.

  • Since the 1970s, one of the Fordist drivers of profit-making has been de-activated: capitalist economies are confronted with a lasting slow-down in the growth of labour productivity. This phenomenon needs to be investigated via the rise in service jobs as a proportion of total employment or via the rise in social control through bullshit jobs (Graeber 2019). What has become of the possibility (or necessity) of a massive fall in work time, notably as imagined and called for by Keynes in 1930 in his “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”?

  • Against this background of continuing weak gains in labour productivity, innovations on the cutting-edge of technology are generating, on the contrary, substantial productivity gains, that go hand in hand with wage gains and therefore unequal earnings. Does the specificity of this exception lie in the fact that labour productivity continues to support innovation; or does it lie instead in the deterioration of the historical regime of growth of labour productivity that now seems to depend on skilled labour and its output? Does this phenomenon help to explain the financialization of economies and the extension of global production chains? What wholesale changes or developments might be generated by the development of Artificial Intelligence (it can be imagined that entire areas of skilled work might be undercut here)? What might be the impacts of the ecological transition or bifurcation which requires us to look again at modes of production?

  • So far, no coherent labour regime has arisen articulating the market development of the labour force via the development of workers themselves. And yet, effects of this transformation are very much present in the accumulation regime or in the ways of determining the terms of distribution conflicts. Is the emergence of an anthropogenetic model (Boyer 2022) at issue?

    • 1 Around 30 per cent for welfare risks and about 8 per cent for education across the board.

    Through education, health, care for the elderly, and so on, labour is the subject of a major production activity, for both the labour force and the population. Depending on the country concerned, this spending may be public, social or private. Whatever its nature, its share in national GDP comes close to 40 per cent in what are deemed developed countries.1 How and why do historically distinct means of financing come to give rise to a comparatively uniform outcome? Can they be inferred from structural transformations of the accumulation regime and how do they influence it?

  • Extension of the field of social protection sees one source of finance through welfare contributions cohabit with another source of finance through taxation. The taxing of social protection contributions is gaining ground throughout Europe. This movement goes along with exemptions for business financing of compulsory social protection for effects on the scale of employment about which there is no consensus. Finally, social policies invariably contribute to supporting household income, without managing to counter the rise in poverty; but they also contribute to the long-term downturn in wages. Fordist institutions continue to support the minimum wage as the norm, and to extend it internationally, while the taxing of the financing of social protection tends to erase it.

  • Sectorial control over public and social spending as sought by many governments is reflected by the declining quality of services. Private investment in these activities steamrolls workers and leads to the ill-treatment of the elderly, children, students and others for largely fictitious profitability levels tethered to public financing. These policies give rise to inequalities that amplify the deterioration of market remuneration of the workforce. The health crisis was a powerful indicator of the true social cost of the fight against these “costs” (Boyer 2020).

  • These sea changes come about in a context of necessary ecological transition and transformation of our modes of production and exchange (Peugny & Rieucau 2021). Since 2009, the concept of fair transition, combining its concrete or prospective proposals remains fuzzy and essentially defensive, questioning the reallocation of workers currently employed by activities related to brown capital. Worker involvement in managing the transition cheek-to-jowl with production has already been raised and implies the terms of a new compromise instituting new industrial relations.

In all of the avenues of enquiry listed, the conflicts and compromises they may generate raise the question of economic democracy (coordination, allocation of resources and capital) in novel terms.

Accordingly, this call for papers seeks to gather proposals for institutional analyses (especially influenced by Regulationist Theory or post-Keynesian analysis) that shed light on developments in the wage-labour nexus or on transformations of work. We invite, then, any submission on these matters in economics, law, sociology, history and in the social sciences more generally. We also ask for proposals that bear on case studies (micro, sectorial or meso analyses, conflict analyses, etc.), that question the impact of the transition or that investigate the dynamics of the individualization or autonomization of work, along with proposals relating to non-wage remunerations. In line with the state of knowledge on the wage-labour nexus, the call for papers does not favour any country or geographical area: the circulation of norms is real, conflict-ridden and adaptive for what is both a national and an internationalized institutional form. Submissions likely to renew knowledge of the wage-labour nexus and the hierarchy of institutional forms also fall within the scope of the call for papers. Lastly, we would welcome contributions examining the development of the conflict over distribution between capital and labour, or among workers themselves within the recent inflationary dynamic.

Papers may be written in French or English, in line with the “instructions for authors” of the Revue de la régulation. It should be sent to the following e mail address: regulation@openedition.org.

Calendar:

Deadline for submission of papers: 15 April 2024

If they wish, contributors may advise the issue organizers they intend to submit a contribution or contact them with any questions:

Jonathan MARIE: jonathan.marie@univ-paris13.fr

Sandrine MICHEL: sandrine.michel@umontpellier.fr

Planned publication date: June/July 2025 

Bibliographie

Aglietta M. (1998), Régulation et crise du capitalisme, 2ème édition augmentée, Paris, Odile Jacob.

Ballon J., Celle S., Fretel A. & D. Vallade (2023), « Coopératives de production : quelle spécificité du rapport social d’activités coopératif à l’aune du rapport salarial ? », Revue de la régulation, vol. 34. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.22351

Bastian E., Charles S. & J. Marie (2021), « Inflation Regimes and Hyperinflation. A Post-Keynesian/Structuralist typology », IE-UFRJ DISCUSSION PAPER, #32.

Berr E., Monvoison V. & J.-F. Ponsot (dir.) (2018), L’Économie post-keynésienne. Histoire, théories et politiques, Paris, Seuil.

Berthonnet I. & C. Clos (2019), « Intégrer la division sexuelle du travail au rapport social du travail. Quelques pistes pour l’analyse régulationniste », Revue de la régulation, vol. 25. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.14506

Boyer R. (1978), « Les salaires en longue période », Économie et Statistique, vol. 103, no 1, p. 27-57.

Boyer R. (2002), « Vingt ans de recherches sur le rapport salarial : un bilan succinct », in Boyer R. & Y. Saillard (dir.), Théorie de la régulation. L’Etat des savoirs, Paris, La Découverte, p. 106-114.

Boyer R. (2020), Les capitalismes à l’épreuve de la pandémie, Paris, La Découverte.

Boyer R. (2022), « Développement anthropogénétique et reconnaissance de l’utilité sociale du travail », Sociologie du travail, vol. 64, no 1-2. DOI : 10.4000/sdt.40685

Erb L.-A. & F.-P. Reynaud (2021), « Les conséquences de la crise sanitaire sur les relations de travail », Revue de la régulation, no 29. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.18630.

Girard P., Michel S., Mercandalli S. & B. Losch (2022), « The income-labour nexus as the dominant institutional form in rural sub-Saharan Africa », Revue de la régulation, no 32. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.21157

Graeber D. (2018), Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, New York, Simon & Schuster.

Laurent C. & M.-F. Mouriaux (2008), « Secteurs, territoires, rapport social d’activités », in Laurent C. & C. Du Tertre (dir.), Secteurs et territoires dans les régulations émergentes, Paris, L’Harmattan, p. 25-62.

Lamarche T. & N. Richez Battesti (2023), « Produire est politique : les coopératives, levier de transformation », Revue de la régulation, no 34. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.22341

Lavoie M. (2022), Post-Keynesian Economics. New Foundations, Cheltenham, Edwar Elgar.

Mazuyer E. (2013), « Les mutations des droits du travail sous influence européenne », Revue de la régulation, no 13. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.10117

Michel S. (2023), « Le retour du rapport salarial ? Une enquête régulationniste », in Boyer R., Chanteau J.-P., Labrousse A. & Lamarche T. (coord.), Théorie de la régulation, un nouvel état des savoirs, Paris, Dunod, p. 137-146.

Michel S. & D. Vallade (2007), « Une analyse de long terme des dépenses sociales », Revue de la régulation, no 1. DOI : 10.4000/regulation.1507

Montalban M. (2023), « Economie numérique et organisation industrielle : enjeux du capitalisme de plateforme », in Boyer R., Chanteau J.-P., Labrousse A. & T. Lamarche (coord.), Théorie de la régulation, un nouvel état des savoirs, Paris, Dunod, p. 529-536.

Perez C., Thevenot N., Berta N., Brochard D., Delahaie N., Jallais S., Perraudin C., Sauviat C. & J. Valentin (2015), « Modes d’ajustement par le travail en temps de crise : des relations professionnelles sous tension », La Revue de l’IRES, vol. 84, no 1, p. 59-90.

Peugny C. & G. Rieucau (2021), « Emploi, travail et environnement : l’heure des transitions ? », Travail et Emploi, no 166-167, p. 5-18. DOI : 10.4000/travailemploi.12531

Stockhammer E. (2012), « Financialization, Income Distribution and the Crisis », Investigación Económica, vol. 71, no 279, p. 39-70.

Supiot A. (2019), Le travail n’est pas une marchandise – Contenu et sens du travail au XXIème siècle, Paris, Collège de France.

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Notes

1 Around 30 per cent for welfare risks and about 8 per cent for education across the board.

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