Work sentenced to death

Episode 1 - Alienation

In France, 3 out of 4 employees work in services. So if there's a crisis in the workplace, that's where we should be looking. We've set up shop in an innocuous company, one of the tens of thousands that exist in the world today: Carglass. Globalized and standardized, Carglass is a subsidiary of the British group Belron, present in over 30 countries worldwide. Here, two creeds stand out: maximum productivity and a totally satisfied customer... Two notions which, today, in all service companies around the world, require the implementation of a handling management system...

Episode 2 - Dispossession

As the crisis rocks financial capitalism, this episode recounts the extraordinary power of shareholders over labor and workers. The story takes us from a Fenwick factory - an industrial manufacturer of handling equipment based in central France - to the arcane world of New York finance. A small French company founded 150 years ago, Fenwick was bought out in 2006 by one of America's most feared financiers, Henry Kravis. A man at the head of the KKR investment fund, whose annual sales exceed those of Coca-Cola, Disney and Microsoft combined. For Fenwick's French employees, this takeover will radically change the situation. This same story is playing out in tens of thousands of companies around the world...

Episode 3 - Destruction

In a world where the economy no longer serves man, but man serves the economy, productivity targets and management methods push employees to the limit. Never before have illnesses, workplace accidents and physical and psychological suffering reached such levels. The stories of the men and women we meet in the offices of occupational psychologists and doctors, at the Labour Inspectorate or at the industrial tribunal, reveal just how urgent it is to rethink the way work is organized.