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Travailleur ou citoyen? L'après-catastrophe de l'usine AZF comme enjeu public

Abstract - Worker or Citizen? Post-disaster AZF plant as a public issue. Our paper deals with industrial hazards as revealing specific social consent problems. Research usually addresses industrial hazards from the angle of confrontation between decision makers and non decision makers. They rarely view it as an issue of social consent among the non decision makers themselves, i.e. among workers and citizens as members of civil society in the Habermassian sense. Investigating whether and how these two social groups may conflict with each other therefore seemed opportune. The case of the AZF plant explosion in Toulouse (September 21st, 2001) offered a chance to analyse this kind of situation. It enabled us to highlight why and how the chemical workers' unions and citizen associations entered into severe conflict about the future of the chemical site, which consists of several plants including AZF. The unions were seen to have managed their relations with their employers and the State on the basis of their own interests without taking into account basic civic criticism. The unions claimed that the workers' collective skills were a guarantee against industrial hazards and did not enter the civil society public spheres of debate about the plants. They used the dialogue procedures set up by public authorities not to get in touch with citizens associations but as a test of strength. Meanwhile, rejection of the chemical site by the citizens associations concerned the very existence of hazardous industrial plants, the non ecological commodities they produce and their risk-fraught production modes which minimise environmental effects and dangers run by local residents. In this sense, the confrontation between the two groups brings to light two opposite conceptions, but no consent whatsoever. We may thus conclude to a dissociation of the roles of worker and citizen in the case of specific problems raised by industrial hazards.

Résumé - Ce texte traite de la thématique des risques industriels comme révélateur d'un problème spécifique d'entente sociale. S'il est courant d'aborder cette question comme une confrontation entre les décideurs et les non-décideurs, plus rares sont les recherches qui traitent des rapports entre non-décideurs : travailleurs et citoyens. En s'appuyant sur l'exemple de la catastrophe de l'usine AZF de Toulouse (septembre 2001), il s'agit de montrer en quoi et comment les syndicats du pôle chimique et un collectif d'organisations se sont affrontés sur le devenir du site. Ainsi peut-on observer que les syndicats du site se sont cantonnés à leurs revendications professionnelles et à leur espace traditionnel de relations avec les employeurs et l'État. Dans le même temps, la critique publique, au sens habermassien du terme (Habermas, 1987), a fortement mis en cause l'existence des usines à risques et a largement occupé les espaces publics. En ce sens, c'est bien à un découplement des rôles de travailleur et de citoyen que l'on assiste.