Abstract: Since the 2010s, so-called concession agreements, justified by management by the need to restore competitiveness, have multiplied. What form do these negotiations take in small firms, where the presence of unions is often fragile? Based on an ethnographic survey in the HRD of an industrial firm of a Finnish group employing 270 people, the article deals with a compulsory annual negotiation which results in a downward revision of the conditions of personnel remuneration. It sheds light on the conditions of possibility of such an offensive use of collective bargaining by the management, in the light of the strategies of the management team, the social properties of the negotiators and the dynamics of industrial relations specific to this firm.
