Dialogue social territorial : les atouts et les ambiguïtés de la proximité

Nowadays, the territory is the place where are implemented devices that challenge highly the traditional modes of intervention of Trade Unions. Shifting from “hard institutional devices” to “soft institutional” ones calls them to desert the negotiation logic to enter more hazy logics of “governance” and “social dialogue”. An action-research we conducted with unionists of several French regions led us to specify the territorialisation process relatively to the more classical processes of decentralisation and de-concentration. An analysis in terms of proximities allowed us to enlighten the difficulties met by Unions to master territorialisation and to point at both the requirements and the opportunities of such a process.