New forms of labour market segmentation, insecurity and professional relations

In the institutionalist analysis of labour markets, the segmentationist approaches are an interesting tool for understanding the employment models. In this paper we will try to show how these approaches must be adapted to the new labour market phenomena in France and what their impact on the French professional relations is. In the first part of this paper, we will show that the evolution of the internal labour markets question the traditional professional promotion and stabilisation in primary market models. In the new flexible economy and the atypical employment age, the external and the transitional markets (G. SCHMID) are imposed and they are transforming the labour market structures. In the second part we relate this transformation with the professional industrial relations between employer's organisations, trade unions and State in France. For trade unions there are many different approaches to study precarious employment. Although the longitudinal approach is more adequate for studying precarious employment, the static or partial analysies are usually more operational for unions. Our objective is to understand the new approaches of trade unions in the actual context where precarious employment is developed outside of internal labour markets.