“The Prime Minister is a collaborator; the boss is me.” This sentence would have been pronounced by Nicolas Sarkozy during an interview granted to the regional press at the end of August 2007, speaking of François Fillon. History records that the latter would have always resented him for having defined their relationship in this way. “Collaborator”, a slap for this N-1. The investigation begins with its definition (Le Robert dictionary): “1. Person who collaborates in a common work. 2. Frenchman in favor of collaboration with the Germans during the Occupation.” For a head (of government), to be described as a “clerk” (even of a common work) or a “collaborator”, whose infamy is remembered in History… the vexation seems legitimate. Paradoxically, the humiliation felt had no impact in the language of the company, where the “collaborator” is, more than ever, a portmanteau word which defines the boss/subaltern, superior/subordinate relationship. What does the Labor Code, which governs relations in the company, say about it?
EPISODE 1 – “Sorry, I’m in a meeting”: the hidden costs of managerial madness
EPISODE 2 – “You are close to burnout, delegate!”, this double-edged managerial injunction
Employee, yes, collaborator, no
The investigation continues in this Code with 52 occurrences for “collaborator”. However, either they relate to external experts called by the manager within the framework of the representative bodies, or they are used for the “collaborating spouse” or the “collaborating doctor”. Result: in law, the “collaborator” does not exist in the company. It is the relationship of subordination and it alone that establishes the employment relationship. The employee is subordinate to his employer and both are bound by a contract with rights and duties. However, the use of the word “collaborator” exists and defines another reality: that of a team directed towards the same goal where the employee/subordinate rises to the level of team member, exceeding the scope of the Labor Code. “Appearing gradually during the 1990s, the term ‘collaborator’ is part of the discursive practices that structure management. Designating both the individual members of a work team and the overall workforce of an organization and the type of relationship maintained by the protagonists, it covers specific meanings”, indicate Jean-Luc Bouillon and Elise Maas, in “Figures of the individual at work, figures of the ‘collaborator’. Strategies in the face of organizational and communicational rationalizations” (Communication & organization, Bordeaux University Press, 2009).
The “homo-collaboratorus”: an idealized figure of the individual at work?
Conclusion: the collaborator therefore exists. “When qualified as a ‘collaborator’, an individual is considered to be subordinate to the organization that employs him, but on the basis of an elastic conception of this hierarchical dependence”, describe Jean-Luc Bouillon and Elise Maas , who call him “homo-collaboratorus”. The secretaries who work for the engineers are their collaborators, the latter being the collaborators of the middle managers, themselves collaborators of senior executives. “In other words, everyone, at one time or another, is someone’s collaborator,” they conclude. End of the investigation? Not quite. It would be good to know how the collaborator supplanted the colleague. “A new stage in the management of work activity is beginning: the relational and communication skills of employees are rationalized for the benefit of the organization of work”, specify Kévin Pastier and François Silva in the article “What deliberative imperative in business? From management to the commons” (Communication & organization, Bordeaux University Press, 2020). For the lawyer Alain Supiot, “as soon as their safety is not guaranteed by a law applying equally to all, [les humains] have no other way out but to pledge allegiance to someone stronger than them”, he wrote in Governance by numbers. Courses at the College de France (2012-2014) (Fayard, 2015). Have we surreptitiously gone from the bond of subordination to allegiance in “Let me become/The shadow of your shadow/The shadow of your hand/The shadow of your dog” mode? Response from socio-anthropologist Agnès Vandevelde-Rougale, in Words & illusions: when the language of management governs us (10/18, 2022): “The fashion is no longer for authoritarian management or hierarchical mille-feuille. This does not mean the end of domination. But the evolution of discourse and practices contributes to its acceptability by fueling a dynamic of ‘voluntary servitude’.” A concept that Etienne de La Boétie had identified, before Jacques Brel and François Fillon, in his Speech of voluntary servitude, appeared in 1574.