From Self-Employed Worker to Entrepreneur. Construction Artisans in France from the 1930s to the 1970s

International audienceL’article se propose de suivre les artisans du bâtiment au sein d’une artisanat qui s’organise et se transforme au XXè siècle et dont il représente une part majeure et croissante. Jusqu’au milieu du siècle, l’artisan du bâtiment est un homme de métier, un ancien ouvrier qui poursuit pour son propre compte son activité en travaillant seul. Recrutant des ouvriers, investissant, communiquant…, ils deviennent de véritables entrepreneurs mais en suivant de multiples voies qui laissent la place à un entrepreneuriat de l’artisanat du bâtiment diversifié.The purpose of this paper is to follow the progressive evolution of French construction artisans from self-employed workers to entrepreneurs. Craft trade structured itself and evolved throughout the 20th century. It went through a difficult time in the 1950s and 1960s, that other trades in the construction sector did not experience. The construction sector was then a major part of all artisan trades, and was growing in importance. Until the middle of the century, artisans in the construction sector were craftsmen, former workers who carried on their activity for themselves, by being self-employed. Then, from the middle of the century, they started recruiting workers, extended their workshops which were more clearly separated from the family area, then they upgraded them, by increasing their financial investments. Transforming their work practices, they opened bank accounts in order to get bank loans, so as to finance their evolving activity and they developed advertising on a local scale in order to get some attraction on their specific market. By expanding these entrepreneurial initiatives, they became real entrepreneurs. Yet as they chose a wide variety of approaches, it left the door open for a diversified range of construction artisanat entrepreneurship. Many companies did not survive beyond 5 years, notably because their owners had underestimated the burden of these entrepreneurial management tasks. Around 1970, slightly more than 40% of construction craftsmen remained self-employed, with no employees. These craftsmen remained strongly influenced by their original cultural working background. Craftsmen employing workers usually hired one or two, and kept on participating to the work on construction sites with their employees on a daily basis. And only a small minority employed more workers and self-labeled themselves “building contractors”. Devoting most of their time to business management tasks, they were less active in the production side. Consequently, they found themselves poised mid-way between traditional small artisanat and larger companies, in positions of intermediates for economic and union issues, which may have given rise to conflicts with other craftsmen, for instance during the Poujadiste protest movement