Open-ended contract or temporary open-ended contract? A proposal concerning a sociological deconstruction of the standard of employment

Abstract

Since March 2014, temporary recruitment agencies can propose a new employment contract: the indefinite-term contract for agency workers (Contrat à Durée Indéterminée-Intérimaire/CDI-I). Agency workers signing this contract are temporary agency employees but on assignment in a user company. This article analyses this new contract and is based on semi-structured interviews with agency permanent staff and agency workers who had been proposed this type of contract (N.B. these workers had not necessarily accepted the offer). In a first part, we but in perspective the indefinite-term contract with employment regulations history in order to understand how this contract has become the employment standard (1). People interviewed in this research were agency workers on assignment in a user company or had a CDI-I. Regardless of their employment status, the reasons why they have accepted or refused the contract, they consider indefinite-term contract as the employment standard (2). Nevertheless, they give much consideration to the effects on labour of the employment status, inviting to analyse indefinite-term contract as a labour standard too (3). They thus confirm it is particularly relevant studying joinly labour and employment