Barcelona Metropolis

Thinker of reference in the study of work, Méda impresses with her passionate, direct, documented and rigorous discourse in defence of work in general and of wage earners in particular, as well as her firmness in upholding the alternative of building a more democratic, fair and ecologically sustainable society.

Professor Méda was born in 1962 in Sedan, France, a small border town near Belgium and the scene of many battles throughout history. Perhaps this has influenced the basic features of her personality, of which we will emphasise three. First, she is a committed leftist intellectual and a member of the post-1968 generation, not the postmodern one. Second, she is a thinker at the academic limits of philosophy, sociology, public policy, gender, economics and ecology. Much of her broad and complex outlook is explained by an educational path that may have been a little undecided at the beginning, but has provided a background of essential knowledge exposing her to the values and ideas she now defends. Third, she is a tireless fighter, as evidenced by her published books, the countless articles she has written and her many appearances in various media and institutions.

Méda was invited to Barcelona by the CCOO trade union and the UAB-UB’s joint postgraduate programme on the Analysis of Capitalism and Transformative Policy. Without a doubt, she is a key figure in the current study of labour. She was a student at the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris, where she read “extremely classical” philosophy, and she later attended the École nationale d’administration (ENA), where she became acquainted with public policy. While studying, it occurred to her that philosophers “were noble souls and that we talked about the world without the tools to change it.” At the ENA, on the other hand, “there was no room for the critical spirit and everything was pure pragmatism,” but it led to her entry into the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs, a recently created department where she became familiar with auditing, inspecting and evaluating social policies. She then spent 10 years at DARES, an organisation created by Martine Aubry in 1993, where she led research on work to build a bridge between public administrations and academia. At that time, the laws to reduce working hours were enacted, which have also left a mark on her career. She later managed research at the Centre of Occupational Studies.

She was certified as a professor in 2009 and became a professor of sociology at Paris-Dauphine University in 2011. However, this did not calm her restless spirit: while teaching classes, she also runs the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Social Sciences (IRISSO). At the same time, she is a professor of Ecology, Work and Employment of the Collège d’études mondiales with Florence Jany-Catrice. In 2016, she was distinguished with the Legion of Honour.

A conscious look to the past, today and the future

With that in mind, we must recognise that Dominique Méda has enviable knowledge that she conveys in the form of rich and sweeping observations about the world of work and the society that goes with it in a conscious look to the past, today and the future.

She tells us that “work is not universal, but has a history behind it.” In certain primitive societies, “it was not distinguished from any other daily activity.” Likewise, “historians show us trades, activities and tasks in classical Greece, but we would not recognise them as conforming to our notion of work.” It is from the Middle Ages that work is given a certain two-sided acknowledgment: as positive, in the case of divine and human labour or as a beneficial and useful act; but also in a negative sense, as it is accompanied by pain and suffering. She adds that the Spanish, Catalan and French words for “work,” trabajo, treball and travail, respectively, as well as the English word travail, come from tripalium, an instrument of torture.

What is the reason for this degradation of working conditions? The author provides several arguments: globalisation and financialisation, as well as innovation in organising work, in technology, in business management and particularly in public management. The core problem is the shift in the social consensus on work “from the predominance of social justice and social protection (welfare state) to a commodified and privatised society in which welfare and protection can only be achieved through individual work, while the state only pushes commodification (workfare state).” This latter vision has been imposed by international organisations (OECD, IMF and EU) arguing that all labour standards must be abolished to achieve a self-regulating job market.

This is not just about material change (working conditions, the reduction of direct wages and social services), but also disappointment. The social ladder is broken. The accumulation of merit, meaning education, no longer opens the same doors of social mobility. At companies, promises of autonomy and responsibility have given way to renewed instruments of control and discipline over work and time, which are particularly stressful for people. Only the Nordic countries are still promoting quality participation and work; they are countries with high rates of union membership. Likewise, job insecurity and instability not only affect temporary workers and the unemployed, but permanent and self-employed workers as well. The entrepreneurial alternative hides degradation; what is called Uberisation is nothing more than a lack of job stability. Likewise, the balance between work and family life remains another unfulfilled promise.