Approaching the technical changes and present working conditions in livestock farms.

摘要

Labour issues, which are critical today for the farming sector, are mainly discussed by social sciences. Yet livestock sciences do have an important and specific part because: (i) technical changes modify the working calendar, priorities between tasks, and the interchangeability between workers; and (ii) technical adaptations are levers to solve labour problems. After summarizing the major trends in work organization models since World War II, this paper introduces the recent contributions of livestock sciences to working model designs that take into account livestock management events and their implications (the Work Assessment method and the "Atelage" model). They are based on three principles: (i) all workers are not interchangeable; (ii) tasks have different rhythms and postponing characteristics since both workers and tasks cannot be easily added as far as the working organization is concerned; and (iii) the year is a chain of working periods that differ in terms of contents, duration of daily tasks (which are mainly daily care of animals in livestock farms but can include the off-farm daily requirements), etc. Based on observations made in farms from the "work organization" point of view, this article underlines the importance of (1) the composition of the workforce, (2) the expectations of a better quality of life, and (3) the combination of non-agricultural, private, and agricultural tasks to accompany the changes occurring in livestock farms..