ABSTRACT
This chapter considers certain contributions by sociologues du travail that have been more or less explicitly focused upon industrial relations. 'Industrial Relations' as a branch of study can have a historical, economic, and more recent fashions for some kind of 'transdisciplinary' approach have often merely increased the uncertainty over what 'Industrial Relations' 'really is'. On the criteria of convergence theory, the French system of industrial relations necessarily appeared wanting, and has remained so, though it has certainly been altering in a number of interesting directions since the war. Although certain industries, occupations, and large firms are highly unionised, in general the density of union membership is low, and there is high membership turnover. To anyone acquainted with the analyses of the British 'system' undertaken by liberal reformists of the 'Oxford School' of Industrial Relations. For the French industrial relations reformer, the index of 'systemic' disorder has not been, as in Britain, the strike-rate, but what might be termed the 'negotiation-rate'.
