Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
that the sector has had to cope with a considerable increase in the duration
of professional life implies that these agreements should offer means for
the development of skills right up to the age of retirement, and not resort
to sidelining workers.
The ways in which these agreements should be implemented is left at
the discretion of the production sites. In one of the sites involved (Gaudart,
2003), the steel manufacturing unit decided to merge two departments,
one involving the operators of travelling cranes, and the other involving
workers in charge of ladle maintenance. The idea was to propose a devel-
opment of job rotation between these two trades, as a solution for develop-
ing career paths. This did not work. Because the operators were all elderly
- the youngest was 40 years old - this result was attributed by top-level
management to a lack of motivation and to problems in learning on the
part of the workers. Activity analysis revealed, on the one hand, differ-
ences in the collective temporalities between these two trades, and on the
other hand, the mismatches of these two temporalities with respect to
the managerial time frame.
Let us first examine the case of travelling crane operators. The time
frame defines rules for progressing in the course of work, following two
scenarios, both of which foster single-purpose work. The first scenario is
organized based on a view of age as a process of decline. Ageing in crane
operators is accompanied by an increase in osteoarticular disorders. In a con-
text of high temporal constraints, notably because of the managerial wish to
increase flexibility in the production system, some operators, after having
occupied many different positions, settle on one crane that suits them best,
i.e. a crane that they can truly control in the face of production constraints,
and that allows them to protect themselves. The second scenario highlights
the function of experience increasing with age. Single-purpose work tends
to focus on the stations that are said to be the most difficult to hold, those
combining a diversity of tasks with strong time constraints. The opera-
tors who work there are those whose expertise in the use of a crane allows
them to ensure reliability. In fact, this expertise implies transgressions of
safety rules, supported by the work collective and by middle management.
Because of this, the expertise successfully resists the requirements of the
managerial time frame. Furthermore, the organization based on single-
purpose work is related to a history of the trade over several generations,
dating back to the times where new operators rotated, i.e. were versatile,
until they 'found their place', i.e. their own crane. This single-purposeness
was, then, viewed as a sign of expertise by the collective.
The preservation of each worker
A homogeneous composition of the members of a collective, in terms of
both age and course of work - we will call these workers elderly - may
