This manuscript has been a long time in the making. It is the product of
an extended chain of reflection and research. The chain stretches back to
1979, when a group of labor inspectors arranged an informal dinner party
in a textile town in northern France, once the cradle of the country’s industrial revolution. The town had by then come to be inhabited almost
entirely by foreign workers; they could be seen approaching and leaving
the old mills at the end of each shift. But the party itself had been prompted
by two things: (1) the debate about “labor market rigidity” that was already
under way at the time and that remains salient in contemporary France
and (2) the requirement that the Ministry of Labor authorize large-scale
layoffs in particular. While almost all of the requested layoffs were approved,
the requirement was nonetheless disdained as a source of rigidity and contested by the business community—a seeming contradiction that prompted
an obvious question: Why did business spend so much time combating a
provision that seemed largely symbolic? As the officials who effectively authorized the layoffs, the inspectors resolved the apparent contradiction early
in the evening when they revealed that, to obtain their approval, management had to invite them onto the premises for a site visit