SUD-PTT unionists: moral entrepreneurs?1

Since its founding in 1988, the SUD-PTT union [Solidarité, Unité, Démocratie at the Poste, Télégraphe et Téléphone] has made using the courts a frequent mode of action in its dealings with the two French public-sector companies in which it is present, La Poste and France Télécom. Legal action is now fully part of SUD-PTT practices. This is surprising for a union so strongly attached to the protest tradition and hostile in both practice and discourse to any form of institutionalization. After considering possible explanations for SUD-PTT's heavy use of legal institutions, the article looks at how the type of conflict it engages in, which may be called “conflit de règles” [conflict about and by means of rules] can be linked to a major trend in contemporary social conflictuality: the fact that the “antagonistic posture” is no longer limited to collective action but is now operative in a more institutionalized approach. The thesis is that this sort of action is not just technical or instrumental but aims to exert pressure on norms, and thereby on the codification of social relations and ways of “living together”.