Rebâtir la confiance après une grève de longue durée: est-ce possible ?

Cette étude a pour but d’analyser les facteurs contribuant à bâtir la confiance entre employés syndiqués et cadres après une grève de longue durée dans une succursale bancaire. Des entrevues semi-dirigées auprès de treize employés et cinq cadres, des observations et une analyse documentaire ont servi à déterminer ces facteurs. Ces derniers ont été analysés à la lumière des écrits scientifiques pour établir un modèle relationnel et analyser la situation vécue par les membres de l’organisation à l’étude. The effects of strikes have always preoccupied industrial relations’ scholars and practitioners. Even though statistically, there have been fewer strikes in Quebec during the last few years, they have not been of lesser interest. The most recent strikes have been more apparent because of their longer duration. This study discusses trust between managers and unionized employees who have returned to work after a fourteen-month strike. The objective is to better understand the phenomenon of trust in a situation of organizational conflict and, more precisely, to analyze the factors that contribute to re-establishing trust between union employees and managers following this major conflict. A few theoretical concepts about trust help us understand the basic elements needed to produce collaborative relationships. Among other things, categories of trust established by Lewicki and Bunker (1996) as well as Zucker (1986) are presented to help make a better judgment with regard to the different types of relationships and to understand the way in which they present themselves in particular situations. This section ends with an overview of the authors’ theoretical perspective, an institutional approach, which makes reference to Powell and Dimaggio’s (1991) framework. Because of the difficulty to access multiple companies affected by a strike, a qualitative case study was conducted. Thirteen union employees and five managers chosen randomly among each job category from a total of forty-six employees make up the sample. They were interviewed during semi-structured interviews six months following the end of the strike. Observations about individual behaviour during the interview period were also taken into consideration. An analysis of internal documents from the organization helped bring out factual information about the state of the relationship between the two groups before, during and after the strike. It is the use of these three traditional methods that helped construc