Collective bargaining in French companies Plural configurations and actor strategies

Promoting company collective bargaining has been at the core of the French industrial relations system reforms. The stated objective is that of establishing local regulation, making it possible to build effective compromises between the diverse interests within the company. What about in practice? Using the REPONSE survey (2017) and administrative data on the geographical location of establishments from the FLORES database (2017), the article shows that the collective bargaining space is structured in four configurations and that the most frequent bargaining configuration does not correspond to local regulation. Using company case studies, we then show how, behind these configurations, the balance of power between the legal negotiation actors are played out and how their respective strategies contribute to defining the negotiation space most conducive to serve their respective intentions.