how retired workers continue the struggle

Interview The sociologist Nicolas Renahy surveyed retired activists from the Peugeot factory in Sochaux, the largest in France at the end of the 1970s, and paints, in his essay “Until the end”, the portrait of a generation of workers who are still struggling. Interview.

Nearly twenty years after “les Gars du coin”, his investigation into rural working-class youth, it is with a group of retired union workers that the sociologist Nicolas Renahy takes us in “Until the end. Aging and resisting in the working world” – which appears this October 3 in La Découverte. Bruno, Clairette, Christian and the others “old branches”formerly of Peugeot Sochaux-Montbéliard, did not stop campaigning once they passed through the factory gate for the last time. Through all the struggles, they try to convey their commitment but also to maintain the very strong bonds of solidarity that bind them. “How can we extend their commitment and the social affiliations that go with it, while the working world which was theirs and which held so many hopes is disappearing before their eyes? »asks the sociologist. Interview.

After the rural youth of “Gars du coin”, why did you choose to investigate retired workers?

Nicolas Renahy I arrived in Montbéliard, at the home of Christian Corouge, a former Peugeot-Sochaux worker and CGT trade unionist, with the idea of ​​investigating the social uses of forests. I was struck by his energy and that of the entire section of CGT retirees at the factory. It has nearly 120 members, including around thirty who…