“The Factory of Violence at Work”: the origins of suffering in the workplace
Insomnia, constant ruminations, crying, memory and concentration problems... The list of symptoms expressed by suffering workers during consultations is long. Some also mention admission to a psychiatric facility. Others admit to having considered ending their lives. Today, "the very idea of returning to work is unbearable for them," notes Daniel Sartor, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst.
In La Fabrique de la violence au travail (The Factory of Violence at Work) (L'Harmattan, 2024), the president of the Souffrance au travail du Gard association sought to analyze the mechanisms at work within organizations that explain the psychological collapse of these patients. Drawing on a multidisciplinary approach, the work of numerous researchers (economists, psychiatrists, etc.), the book examines contemporary work organization, searching for the drivers of this violence that affects the mental health of many employees. In doing so, the essay also examines the psychological drivers of workers, which are also rich in lessons: what internal processes can, depending on the situation, keep them going or collapse?
Limited initiative capacityThe book firstly recalls the clearly identified structural changes that have affected organisations since the 1980s. Driven by the financialisation of the economy, these have intensified the process of "task fragmentation" introduced by Taylorism, multiplied control procedures and orchestrated management by numbers.
So many changes that have limited to the bare minimum the employees' capacity for initiative and the opportunities offered to them to adapt the prescribed work to reality. "Living work, that which contributes to the construction and transformation of the subject, thus making him competent and experienced (...) is no more," deplores Mr. Sartor. The new worker is treated inhumanely, considered interchangeable, disposable, without identity, without identification."
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