Grèves et productivité du travail : application au cas français

The aim of this paper is to provide a first assessment of the effect of strike frequency on labor productivity, in the context of French firms, using merged data from the REPONSE 2004-2005 survey (Dares) and the French Annual Business Survey – EAE (Insee). The Anglo-Saxon literature outlines contradictory theoretical arguments on this question and provides mixed empirical results. Controlling for the unobserved heterogeneity bias, using a control function approach, we show that strike frequency has a non-linear effect on French firms’ labor productivity, which proves to be positive and growing up to a certain threshold, and non-significant beyond. Then, we highlight that the effect of strike frequency on labor productivity varies significantly depending on employees’ absenteeism within the firm. Strike incidence may affect positively and indirectly labor productivity, provided not to be associated with a problematic absenteeism within the workforce. In contrast, when associated with this individual expression of conflict from employees, strikes have no effect on labor productivity.