Heterogeneity versus homogeneity? Transformation of wage relations of the French and the German public telephone operators: The case of directory inquiry services

The paper combines approaches of macro-economic regulation and interactional analysis in order to study the impact of privatisation on wage relations of the French and the German public telephone operator in the field of directory inquiry services. This multi-level (individual, local and company-wide), international comparison provides a concrete case study of the impact of the transformation of socio-economic context on the wage relations of telephone operators in the companies under consideration. The comparison covers several local inquiry centres (5 in France and 5 in Germany), situated in regions supposed to provide a diverse socio-demographic profile of the population (two centres in each country have been chosen to provide evidence for this paper). The paper aims to show that the definition of productivity and service outcome is at the core of the transformation process. It is at the centre of negotiations between managers, employees and users of inquiry services concerning service output (in daily routine interactions as well as with regard to work organisation). The nature of changes differ between the countries. The transformation of wage relations takes place at different levels: in France, it varies from one local inquiry centre to another, whereas in Germany it is more homogeneous and company-wide. This difference is related to the respective ways of implementing the transformation process: while in both countries, ideology is a driving force of (legitimation of) change, in France new technical tools have been more widely used during the phase of change under observation (1995-97) whereas in Germany statutory changes of employees (and outsourcing) have been a key issue.