Fighting, what next? An organization of laid-off workers, between collective and community action

This article aims at analyzing the evolution of the roles played by a nonprofit organization founded by ex-industry workers, five years after the end of a long and highly mediatized collective mobilization against the closure of the rural plant that employed them in south western France. Right after the closure, the organization's local became a space to preserve the relationships and sociability built during the mobilization, and to organize the activities that maintained the mobilization despite the closure, specially on its juridical aspects. This organization also appeared as a place for discussion and thinking, where numerous workers built and mobilized political schemes about economic globalization, blue collars' position in the productive system and national political leaders' activities. They did so, partly, thanks to their discussions with union leaders. However, new issues have since emerged (looking for new jobs, negotiating a new mutual fund contract, protecting the most isolated ex-workers), and both the organization's activities and the union leaders' interventions have mainly focused on social action, although not totally forgetting the plant's activities. The debates existing about this cohabitation, between a service dedicated to managing individual social situations and the initial goal of maintaining alive the group fighting for its rights and jobs, comes around both the (non)-attribution of a political function to the organization and the evolution of the workers' group. Adapted from the source document.