Sébastien Bouvet

Bruce Pégot

Stéphane Sengmany

Erwan Le Gall

Eric Léonel

Anne-Marie Goncalves
email: anne-marie.goncalves@uvsq.fr

Emmanuel Magnier
email: emmanuel.magnier@uvsq.fr

Controlled decomposition of SF6 by electrochemical reduction

Keywords: electroreduction, fluoride anion, redox potential, sulfur hexafluoride

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Introduction

Sulfur hexafluoride (SF 6 ) is a fluorinated gas firstly identified in 1900 by Henry Moissan [1]. The strategy applied at industrial level to obtain SF 6 uses sulfur in the presence of molecular fluorine. Sulfur hexafluoride possesses the particularity of being an inert gas both chemically and physiologically, it is non-flammable, has a high density and a high dielectric constant (2.5 times greater than that of air) [2][3][4][5]. These properties explain that this compound is widely used industrially as an electrical insulating gas in circuit breakers or in electrical substations [START_REF] Naidu | Gas Insulated Substation[END_REF][START_REF] Christophorou | [END_REF]. On the other hand, SF 6 is a greenhouse gas [8]. It has indeed a global warming potential (GWP) 22,000 times greater than CO 2 [9]. From an industrial point of view, this requires efficient methods of recycling or destroying SF 6 . This last point implies, because of its great stability, the use of expensive methods requiring a large input of energy (high temperature, high pressure). Many SF 6 decomposition strategies so far developed use photoreduction, plasma discharges or even photolysis processes [10,11]. Beyond the energetic high cost of such processes, they produce side products that are highly reactive, corrosive and toxic [12]. Recent and really impressive works were devoted to the decomposition of sulfur hexafluoride using stoichiometric or catalytic amounts of metals (Rh, Ni, Pt) [13][14][15][16]. Organic derivatives (phosphines or bipyridine) proved efficient tools for the selective degradation of SF 6 [17,18]. Other elegant approaches have described the use of SF 6 as precursor of reagent for fluorination or pentafluorosulfanyla-tion. Very interestingly, the photochemical activation of this gas was described and allowed the in situ transformation of alcohols into alkyl fluorides [19,20]. The modern and green photoredox catalytic activation of SF 6 was recently performed for the fluoro-and alkoxypentafluorosulfanylation of styrenes [21,22]. The same type of transformation was also described through the reductive activation of sulfur hexafluoride with TEMPO [23].

To the best of our knowledge, electrochemical reduction of SF [START_REF] Naidu | Gas Insulated Substation[END_REF] has not yet been disclosed. The decomposition of sulfur hexafluoride by electrochemistry can nevertheless be a suitable answer and interesting alternative to the previous expensive options. In this article, we describe the electrochemical behavior of sulfur hexafluoride dissolved in various organic solvents. After combining an analytical approach of electrochemistry and 19 F NMR spectroscopy, we have succeeded in the total consumption of SF 6 in an electrochemical cell.

Results and Discussion

The first step of this work began with the measurement of the solubility of sulfur hexafluoride in an organic solvent. This data was not available in the literature but was however crucial for the implementation of the electrochemical experiences. Two solvents (DMF and acetonitrile) were selected for their good dissolution abilities and their large electroactivity area. The solubility of SF 6 was measured, at 20 °C, by 19 F NMR with chlorodifluoromethoxybenzene as internal standard probe. The concentration value for DMF was quite low (0.17 g/L) whereas the one for acetonitrile (2.48 g/L) was convenient for further studies. Acetonitrile is a common nonaqueous solvent in electrochemistry. Having a dielectric constant relatively high (ε = 38), acetonitrile allows a good dissociation of several salts providing the conductivity of the medium. The concentration of SF 6 in the following studies was then around 1.7 × 10 -2 M.

We then turned our attention to the determination of the reduction potential of SF 6 . To allow its electroreduction feasibility in acetonitrile, an electrochemical analytical approach was required [24]. This crucial step was supported by sensors which are based on a micro-disc-array of platinum ultramicroelectrodes (20 µm diameter) acting as multi-probe channels.

Due to their small size, microelectrodes provide electrochemical studies of very low concentrations of electroactive substances contained in a small amount of solvent. As a consequence, a conductive solvent is not required and a low concentration of conducting salt is sufficient. In contrast to macroelectrodes, the current density on microelectrodes is very high. This allows a better current sensitivity in electrochemical measurements (cyclic voltametrics, polarization curve …) providing the study of rapid electron and coupled chemical reactions. In comparison to macroelectrodes, their small size leads to a large decrease of the capacitive current and avoids IR drop effects. The array of Pt microdiscs offers the advantage of summing the current intensity of each microelectrode, thus increasing the sensitivity of the resulting current [START_REF]Microelectrodes: Theory and Applications[END_REF].

Whereas a planar diffusion is observed onto classical electrode (size >0.1 cm 2 ), a hemispherical diffusion is expected with a microdisc electrode due to the contribution of the current diffusion by edge effects. The mass transport regime is then drastically modified on microdisc electrodes and can be adjusted in accordance with the polarization time by monitoring the potential scan rate. By cyclic voltametry, unlike macroelectrodes, the polarization of microelectrodes with a low potential scan rate (≤25 mV/s) leads to a drastic decrease of Cottrel contribution which involves the disappearance of current waves. The resulting current becomes a stationary current of diffusion (id), which is directly proportional to the bulk concentration of the electroactive substance (C ∞ ), its diffusion coefficient in the solvent (D), the number of electrons exchanged in the electrochemical process (n), and the radius of the microelecrode (r) and F the Faraday constant, in accordance with the following relation [26]:

(1)
To the half limiting current (id/2) can be associated the half wave potential noted E 1/2 . For reversible electrons exchanged at the interface electrode/electrolyte, the half wave potential can be assimilated to the reversible formal potential redox couple noted E°ox/red [27]. After the addition of SF 6 , a stationary current is clearly observed before the acetonitrile reduction [28]. The electrochemial response of SF 6 is related to a reproducible stationnary cathodic current. The intensity of the limiting current (plateau intensity) directly depends on SF 6 concentration. From the voltamogram, the half wave potential of SF 6 reduction is deduced and corresponds to -2.17 V vs Fc + /Fc (Figure 1).

To the best of our knowledge, this was the first determination of the redox potential of sulfur hexafluoride. Pleasingly, this value was compatible with the employed solvent and offered the opportunity to reduce this gas in solution. In order to reach our target, i.e., the total consumption of SF 6 into stable and nontoxic species, the next step was the determination of the number of electrons. It was determined by using two controlled size (S) of Pt electrodes: Pt ultramicroelectrode (∅ 20 µm, S 1 = 3.14 × 10 -6 cm 2 ) and Pt macroelectrode (∅ 0.76 mm, S 2 = 4.5 × 10 -3 cm 2 ). Using Pt ultramicroelectrode, the stationary current density (j 1 ) is deduced from Equation 2: (2)

Assuming a rapid electron transfer, the current (j 2 ) decreases exponentially with time (t) according to the Cottrell law (Equation 3) onto a Pt macroelectrode, under sufficient electrochemical polarization [START_REF] Bard | méthodes et applications[END_REF].

(3) From a combination of Equation 2 and Equation 3, the determination of the number of electrons exchanged is given by Equation 4 [START_REF] Amatore | [END_REF]: (4) The number of electrons exchanged (Equation 4) only depends on the validity of the Cottrell equation onto the macroelectrode (j 2 ) since a constant current density (j 1 ) is detected onto the microelectrode. The validity of the Cottrell equation requires a linear variation of the current density (j 2 ) with t -1/2 . This linear variation gives the upper limit on time. From this straight line the maximum duration (t) and the corresponding value of j 2 are determined. These two values (t and j 2 ) are then included in Equation 4 for the determination of the number of electrons exchanged. The macroelectrode (Ø = 0.76 mm) was polarized at -2.3 V vs Fc + /Fc after saturation of SF 6 in the electrolyte. The chronoamperogram was reported in Figure 2. As it was expected, an exponential decrease of the current was indeed observed just before reaching a stationary current which was related to a constant layer thickness of SF 6 diffusion. Indeed, the decrease in current comes from the consumption of SF 6 at the interface electrode/acetonitrile. The current intensity depends on the SF 6 flow in agreement with the 1st Fick's Law from which the Cottrell equation is originated [START_REF] Bard | méthodes et applications[END_REF]. The upper limit on time was determined from the straight line reported in the insert figure (Figure 2). A value of 11.9 ± 0.7 s was deduced and the corresponding value of i 2 (-34.2 µA ± 0.5) was determined from the chronoamperogram (Figure 2). Based on these values, the number of electron (ne -= 7.8 ± 0.3) was deduced from Equation 4. The reduction mechanism of SF 6 can then involve 8 electrons per molecule: This preliminary study is an important step to determine the best conditions for the SF 6 electrolysis (the choice of potential polarization, the understanding of current decrease). With these analytical data in hands, the large scale decomposition of SF 6 was then undertaken. The reactions were carried out in a single compartment with a conventional three-electrode arrangement: two platinum electrodes and one silver reference electrode, SRE (Figure 3). The electrolysis is performed at constant potential (-2.3 V vs Fc + /Fc) with a continuous supply of SF 6 placed in a rubber balloon (constant bubbling). The electrolysis was investigated on the same electrolyte but with larger surface of Pt electrode (15 cm 2 ) (Figure 4). Figure 4b clearly highlights the consumption of the gas by the decrease of the electrochemical waves.

The control of the decomposition of the sulfur hexafluoride was also monitored by 19 F NMR (Figure 5). After 3 hours experience, unidentified side-products were detected by NMR. Identification of these fleeting species as well as their potential reactivity are under current investigation in our laboratory. The left part of Figure 5 clearly demonstrates the total disappearance of SF 6 after 6 hours as well as all the fluorinated organic compounds. The only peak detected by 19 F NMR is around -153 ppm. This value corresponds to the classical chemical shift range of a fluoride anion. Due to its broad appearance, we can postulate the association with cations coming from the supporting electrolytes based on tetrabutylammonium (TBA) structures after anion exchange. This poor resolved signal is quite classical for such species due to hydrogen bonds. Another important point is the production of H + ions at the counter electrode because of the oxidation of acetonitrile [31,32]: They can associate themselves with the F -anions and generate bifluoride HF 2 anions or even polyfluorides F(HF). The presence of fluoride anions can produce a Hoffman elimination on the alkyl chain of TBA giving rise to tributylamine, butene, and HF. We can suppose that the anion S 2 -could also be react with these hydrogen sources and become H 2 S. Nevertheless, in spite of our efforts it is very difficult to clearly identify all these decomposition compounds. A comprehensive analytical study could be of interest but it falls down the scope of the present article.

Conclusion

The smooth and controlled decomposition of sulfur hexafluoride was described under electroreduction. The reduction potential was firstly determined and used for preparative studies. The extrapolation on large scale of this methodology is under current development in our laboratory.

Experimental

Acetonitrile (HPLC grade, Mallinckrodt) was distilled from CaH 2 and then degassed using three freeze-pump-thaw cycles before use. An electrochemical cell filled up with 40 mL of acetonitrile with TBABr (0.1 M) or TBAClO 4 (0.1 M) as conducting salt at room temperature. The degassing of the medium was performed under an argon stream before the bubbling of SF 6 to reach a saturated concentration that is 1.7 × 10 -2 M. A balloon filled with 8 g of SF 6 (0.055 mmol) is connected to the device (see Figure 3) and the electrolysis is carried out until the balloon is empty. The electrochemical set-up was a classical three electrodes device. All potentials were measured against a pseudo silver reference electrode (SRE). The addition of ferrocene in the electrolyte gives access to an internal reference [33].

In order to improve the current detection level of SF 6 , platinum disk electrodes were used as working electrode (Pt ultramicroelectrode with a diameter of 20 µm, an array of eight Pt ultramicroelectrodes with a diameter of 20 µm and a Pt macroelectrode with a diameter of 1 mm). Platinum disk microelectrodes were made by sealing into very fine glass, one or eight platinum wires, with a diameter of 20 µm, into the same soft glass tubing [33]. The microelectrodes array was polished successively on finer grades sand paper. After the analytical approach, a Pt wire (15 cm 2 ) is used to allow SF 6 electrolysis.

Whatever the step of the study (analytical, electrolysis) a smooth platinum electrode with a larger surface was used as a counter electrode. Electrochemical measurements were covered by a wide range of a potentiostat for more effective current detection. A potentiostat-galvanostat such as Princeton Applied Research Model 263 was monitored by its front panel and analogue-to-digital conversion was provided by «Powerlab». A Parstat 2273 potentiostat was also used with its internal «Powersuite» software. For all cyclic voltammetries, the conventional representation of anodic currents is reported as positive values and cathodic currents as negative values.

SF 6 electrolysis was performed in acetonitrile with a constant potential in an undivided electrochemical cell.

The control of the decomposition of sulfur hexafluoride was monitored by 19 F NMR. The spectra were recorded with a Bruker AC-200 or AC-300 spectrometer. Reported chemical shifts are based on a first order analysis. Internal reference was the peak of CFCl 3 (δ = 0.00 ppm) for 19 F (188 or 282 MHz) NMR spectra. The 19 F NMR of the final mixture was recorded after concentration under vacuum to see a broad fluoride signal.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: (a) Cyclic voltammetry onto microelectrode arrays (Ø = 20 µm) in acetonitrile freshly distilled after the addition of TBAClO 4 (0.1 M) at room temperature, under slight argon stream, v = 20 mV/s. (b) Same conditions as for (a) after addition of SF 6 . (c) Same conditions than (a) after addition of ferrocene (10 -3 M).

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2: Variation of the current reduction (i 2 ) of SF 6 onto Pt macroelectrode (Ø = 0.76 mm) at -2.3 V vs Fc + /Fc in acetonitrile freshly distilled after addition of TBAClO 4 (0.1 M) at room temperature, under slight argon stream. Insert figure: Determination of the upper limit on time of Cottrell law from the straight line i 2 = f(t -1/2 ).

Figure 4 :

 4 Figure 4: Electrolysis of SF 6 at -2.3 V vs Fc + /Fc in acetonitrile freshly distilled after addition of TBAClO 4 (0.1 M) at room temperature under slight argon stream. (a) Exponential decrease of the cathodic current according to the electrolysis duration onto a smooth Pt electrode (15 cm 2 ). (b) Decrease of the cathodic current during the electrolysis duration which is detected onto an array of Pt microelectrodes (Ø = 20 µm).

Figure 5 :

 5 Figure5:19 F NMR evolution of the crude mixture along the time after electrolysis realized at constant potential of -2.3 V/SRE; (left).19 F NMR expansion of the final mixture.

Figure 3 :

 3 Figure 3: Single compartment three-electrode experiment. 1: Balloon of SF 6 , 2: electrochemical cell, 3: reference electrode (silver wire), 4: counter-electrode (platinum), 5: working electrode (platinum).

Funding S.B. thanks the French Ministry of Research for a Ph.D. grant. The Rhodia-Solvay company is gratefully acknowledged for the gift of sulfur hexafluoride. The French Fluorine Network (GIS Fluor) is acknowledged for financial support.

ORCID ® iDs

Bruce Pégot -https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5137-5548 Erwan Le Gall -https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8972-3971 Eric Léonel -https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2998-1004 Emmanuel Magnier -https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3392-3971


Maxime Quijoux
email: maxime.quijoux@lecnam.net

The power of (the) union. Trade-unionism and workplace democracy in a French recovered factory

Keywords: trade unionism, cooperative, worker, takeover, participation, work

Since the 2000s, workplace democracy has become the vehicle of a new political imagination that may offer an alternative to the excesses of capitalist globalization. However historical and sociological research has regularly highlighted difficulties of establishing democratic structures in the workplace. What happens when a trade-union becomes the main actor of this democratization? Underlining the strong bureaucratization of the trade union field, studies on trade unionism seem to predict low potentials. The case of a cooperative takeover of a French company by the CGT union in the early 2010s gives us the opportunity to verify this claim empirically. The examination of the transformation of this printing company into a worker cooperative leads to two main results: firstly, we will see that while trade union bureaucratization allows the takeover of the companythanks to trained and professionalized organizersit also constitutes an obstacle when setting up the main cooperative schemes, as shown by the lack of participation in general meetings. In a second phase, however, it will be seen that trade unionism produces its own participatory mechanisms: by placing members from each sector on the board of directorsfrom the reception to the printing presses and the sales departmentthe union sets up a "sociological democratization" which has important effects on the functioning of the enterprise: the cooperative thus creates a continuum of interactions and the possibility to contest which constitute "worker control" over the new management.

However, the enthusiasm that the (re)discovery of democratic models of work has generated should not obscure a certain scepticism in the literature. While some analysts, particularly in political theory, point to the need to reduce the gap between citizenship in the public sphere and the sphere of work (e.g. [START_REF] Pateman | Participation and Democratic Theory[END_REF], research on experiences of workplace democracy regularly focuses on the causes of their collapse. In an article published in 2016, Plys examines the reasons for the failures of worker self-management attempts in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in the Third World. Originating in revolutions, reforms, or social movements, these initiatives failed not so much for economic reasons as for the threat they posed to political regimes [START_REF] Plys | Worker Self-Management in the Third World, 1952-1979[END_REF]. In this historical sequence, self-managed companies usually ended up being nationalized. Research on the long experience of Yugoslav selfmanagement has, for its part, often been critical of a system that was reluctant to represent workers (Broekmeyer & Marius, 1977) despite the spaces for information and exchange that it provided [START_REF] Taylor | Work Satisfaction Under Yugoslav Self-Management: On Participation, Authority, and Ownership[END_REF]. Based on cooperative experiments conducted in the Pacific-Northwest plywood industry, [START_REF] Greenberg | Industrial Self-Management and Political Attitudes[END_REF] dampened any hopes that these experiments might be a wellspring of new socialist-leaning practices in capitalist countries, and described the members of cooperatives as driven by 'petty-bourgeois' considerations. My earlier research has shown that in the case of worker-recovered companies in Argentina, the employees who founded cooperatives were those who fostered close ties with their former boss, explaining the reproduction of competitive and social control practices [START_REF] Quijoux | Néolibéralisme et autogestion, l'expérience argentine[END_REF]. More recently, a comparative study of two large Spanish and English cooperatives shows that the status of cooperative members is highly ambivalent. Owning one's company does little to encourage forms of collective commitment and responsibility [START_REF] Basterretxea | Do Employee-Owned Firms Produce More Positive Employee Behavioural Outcomes? If Not Why Not? A British-Spanish Comparative Analysis[END_REF]. 1What happens, then, when the main union takes over a company as a cooperative? Despite the one-time rapprochements during the 20 th century, trade-unions are actually far from the paradigm of cooperativism. Both in France and in the United Kingdom, unions have a historic mistrust of companies which "transformed employees into bosses » [START_REF] Lojkine | le tabou de la gestion[END_REF] or divided workers' interests [START_REF] Tuckman | The Success and Failings of UK Work-Ins and Sit-Ins in the 1970s: Briant Colour Printing and Imperial Typewriters[END_REF]. In France, moreover, the weakness of the cooperative movement (63.000 employees) makes it appear as a very marginal issue (both main unions, the CGT and CFDT, count ten times more members on average each), while in United Kingdom worker cooperative were accused of contributing to the privatization of the public sector (Pendleton & Robinson, 2017).

More prosaically, trade unionism seems far removed from cooperative values by the very nature of its operation. Since the 1970s, research in industrial relations has shed light on the phenomena of bureaucratization that structures union life. In the footsteps of Richard [START_REF] Hyman | Industrial Relations: A Marxist Introduction[END_REF], many investigations had shown that organizations that defend workers' interests were characterized by power being organized around a small number of full-time officers, paid and professionalized staff, who were in charge of the negotiation in the name of all members of the trade-union. This asymmetry in decision-making has gradually spread to the lower strata of organizations, with unionism invariably being a source of power held by the few [START_REF] Hyman | British Trade Unionism in the '70s[END_REF][START_REF] Heery | Professional, participative and managerial unionism: an interpretation of change in trade unions[END_REF]. More recently, however, Darlington et Upchurch (2011) have recalled that this process is not linear: if a dominant social position can lead a trade-unionist to defend the current system, it can also, according to historical contingencies and local configurations, lead him or her to defending demands coming from the bottom. After a "participatory impetus" during the 1970s, in a context of industry decline, trade-unions have experienced, from the 1980s onwards, a bureaucratic revival characterised by a strong cooptation of trade union leaders by employers (Kelly, 2004;Darlington, Upchurch, op.cit.).

French investigations have found out similar outcomes : Andolfatto and Labbé (2011) have emphasized the way in which the interests of trade union organisations have gradually become autonomous from those of the workers they are supposed to represent: between financial dependence on the state and growing involvement of elected trade union officials in various quasi-governmental institutions (labour courts, unemployment, pension and training funds), trade unionism faces a substantial distance from the workers. According to these authors, this explains why France has the lowest rate of trade union membership in Europe. Others have qualified these outcomes, pointing to the diversity of union profiles [START_REF] Yon | Worker Mobilization in the 1970s: Revisiting Work-ins, Co-operatives and Alternative Corporate Plans[END_REF]) and the pressures on grassroots activist work [START_REF] Mischi | Le bourg et l'atelier[END_REF]. Nevertheless, just as in the United Kingdom, the bureaucratization of trade unions, that is, the process of differentiating and opposing practices and interests according to one's position in the organization, is a key point for understanding French trade union action. Therefore, to what extent can trade unionism contribute to democracy at work? In what ways do trade union positions and practices, particularly bureaucratic ones, shape it? Are trade unionists, in turn, doomed to failure?

The employee takeover of the Helio Corbeil printing works provides an illuminating example of the effects of trade unionism on democracy at work. On 7 February 2012, the employees of the Helio Corbeil printing plant in Corbeil-Essonnes, a town located about thirty kilometers south of Paris, won an unexpected victory: the commercial court accepted the takeover bid put forward by the factory's trade unionists to set up a Société Coopérative et Participative (SCOP) or workers' cooperative. 2 While this initiative succeeded after struggling for only 6 months, it was the result of a longer period of union mobilization. From the late 1990s until the cooperative was formed in 2012, the workers, led by their delegates from the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération Générale du Travail or CGT), 3 mobilized a wide range of collective actions to limit job losses and prevent the company's closure. In the early 2000s the company still employed nearly 400 people; the recovery managed to save the last 80 jobs at the plant. As is often the case in this type of participatory enterprise, the motive for the worker takeover lay less in democratic aspirations than in willingness to protect employment [START_REF] Yon | Worker Mobilization in the 1970s: Revisiting Work-ins, Co-operatives and Alternative Corporate Plans[END_REF]Fernández Álvarez, 2016;[START_REF] Gourgues | Pourquoi ont-ils tué Lip ?[END_REF]Reid, 2 A SCOP is a for-profit company whose employees own the majority of shares. As members of the cooperative enterprise, the employees elect the board of directors and CEO every four years. The company's profits are divided between the 'labour share' assigned to member employees (a minimum 25% of profits) and reserves intended for investment in the company. There are now 2,991 SCOPs in France with more than 53,000 employeesincluding 27,800 membersand a turnover of 4.6 billion euros. Almost one in two belongs to the service sector, one in three to construction and industry. Source: http://www.les-scop.coop/ 2017 3 Founded in 1895, the CGT was for a long time the biggest trade union in France. It currently claims to have more than 600,000 members (3% of the paid workforce), but had a membership of nearly four million workers at the time of the Liberation. Following the Russian revolution, it appeared to be the extension of the French Communist Party (Communist Party membership was compulsory for all CGT leaders until the mid-1990s). Since the early 2000s, it has claimed independence from all political parties. The CGT remains very present in the country's main industrial sectors (automotive, metallurgy, chemistry, agri-food), the civil service (transport, hospitals, administration) and the large formerly national companies (the post office, telecommunication, electricity). It is authorized to negotiate at company, industry and national levels. 2018).Furthermore, the CGT, which was for a long time close to the French Communist Party (PCF), is one of the confederations most hostile to the cooperative movement [START_REF] Lojkine | le tabou de la gestion[END_REF]. This article is based on research conducted at this printing plant, located in the Ile-de-France region, using two main methods: archival research based on a set of trade union archives dating back to the 1980s (social balance sheets, chartered accountant's report, company agreements, works council minutes, trade union information, handwritten notes, press articles, company magazines, letters and emails); and a 22-week participant observation between October 2012 and April 2013, when I interned at the plant. I was responsible for improving communication between the new management and the member employees, and consequently attended all board meetings, governance training sessions and the company's general meetings. But most of my time was spent with the different groups in the plant in various settings and situations: with teams of workers attending to the press, at the works council office 4 with the trade unionists, in the management office and accompanying the new CEO on business outside the factory. This wide variety of observation points and interactions provided me with a comprehensive view of how the company operated, giving rise to a book-length analysis published in 2018. Since the end of the observation period, I have been in contact with the members of the SCOP whom I visit on an ad hoc basis (once a quarter on average).

Based on this case, I advance two sets of findings. First, study of the collective action that led to the takeover suggests a paradox. By making collective bargaining the core of its activist activity, as Hyman claims, bureaucratization leads to "professionalize" its union leaders, i.e. equipping them with a range of economic, legal and social skills [START_REF] Heery | Professional, participative and managerial unionism: an interpretation of change in trade unions[END_REF][START_REF] Hyman | The Political Economy of Industrial Relations[END_REF][START_REF] Quijoux | Adieux au patronat. Vulaines-sur-Seine: le Croquant[END_REF][START_REF] Thursfield | The social construction of professionalism among organizers and senior organizers in a UK trade union[END_REF]. These skills appear indispensable when it comes to transforming their business into a cooperative. However, if it is professionalization that makes it possible to "democratize" the factory formally, it remains an obstacle when a cooperative regime is established: the concentration of skills in a small group of trade unionists leads to delegation and self-censorship on the part of the rest of the employees, which renders the main participatory mechanisms inoperative. The general meeting, the most common and emblematic practice of the cooperative system -because it is compulsory at least once a yearconstitute un relevant example.

In a second step, the aim is to qualify this first result and to highlight another effect of unionism on the cooperative enterprise. Unlike most cooperatives, whose management is composed exclusively of white-collar workers, the CGT decided to include representatives of all the occupations within its board of directors: from the reception to the printing presses and the sales department. This "sociological democratization" of the company's management had unexpected democratic effects when the cooperative was set up: it made it possible to get around the phenomenon of self-censorship by making possible a continuum of interactions between the basic workers and the members of the board of directors. This continuum of 4 Works councils were instituted following the Liberation and are still one of the main institutions representing employees in French companies. Works councils are mandatory in companies with more than 50 employees and are financed by the employer. They are in charge of managing a set of social measuresfrom the distribution of entertainment tickets to subsidised holiday accommodationbut above all they serve to counterbalance the employer's power through a set of legal and juridical means. The employer must consult the works council for a range of decisions relating to the organization of work, the economic situation and the company's finances. In case of doubt about the transparency of the accounts, the works council may request the intervention of an accountant at the expense of the employer. interaction was also encouraged by the isolation of the teams: nearly 100 employees worked in 3 shifts spread over 19,000 square meters. In particular, it also made possible protest actions in the workshops. More broadly speaking, we will see that the presence of blue-collar workers created the conditions for "workers control": the members of the board of directors are required to take the opinions of their workshop colleagues into account during board meetings, because they are subject to their comments on the decisions taken at the head of the cooperative in the workshops or offices.

In short, trade unionism carries its own forms of social domination and thus seems to have little respect for the cardinal values of the cooperative movement, like the election of the leadership, deliberation, and the general assembly. Nevertheless, it appears to be the creator of other democratic mechanisms such as sociological democratization of the leadership and various forms of control by the workers. Although less formal, these are no less effective.

I.

A recovery marked by union professionalization

1.

A factory with a strong union presence Helio Corbeil is a two-hundred-year-old factory with many social characteristics of a 'workers' fortress', that symbolic seat of a united, conscious, and combative workforce. The factory specializes in rotogravure printing 5 and produces about ten million copies of television magazines each week. Almost all the employees are skilled male workers. The collective agreement for the sector the company belongs to is fairly favourable for blue-collar workersthe lowest wage is 1.800 euros net per monthwhich compensates for difficult working conditions (shift work, noise, exposure to hydrocarbons, etc.). Traditionally, employees often started working at Helio Corbeil at a young agebetween 15 and 20to make a career there.

As soon as they joined the company, they experienced rapid professional socialization through learning the trade on the job and socializing with co-workers. There was also the feeling of belonging to a large industrial group; employees who arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, often through an acquaintance and/or the printing school, joined a factory owned by the Hachette group, one of the world's leading publishing companies. Many see this period as a 'golden age' to which they like to identify and refer.

Helio Corbeil is also strongly marked by trade union activism, in particular by the CGT. In the period at stake, 1980-2013, there was a very high rate of CGT membership in the company. In 1996, for example, one third of the factory's workforce belonged to this union (150 out of 449 employees), which obtained 87.6 per cent of workers' votes in the workplace elections. The CGT was also the majority union among managers. Conflicts were frequent within the factory, with strikes made particularly effective by singular production conditions: with strict printing deadlines to meeton pain of penaltiesplant managers generally had little room for maneuver when employees stopped production. However, strikes were just one part of the union's protest activity, which was also characterized by a strong 'culture of intervention in the management' of the company (Lojkine, 1996, p. 5). Employee

5

This is an intaglio printing process based on the transfer of images engraved on copper cylinders. This technique makes it possible to produce high volumes of print. Gravure printing was made part of French intangible cultural heritage in 2008.

representatives demonstrated a keen understanding of the technical and economic challenges facing their plant. They did not hesitate to challenge management's choices using documents that their mandate allowed them to obtain, information from the unionwithin other companies or the federationor analyses produced by accounting firms. In this sense, the local branch of the CGT at Helio Corbeil was characterized by the existence of a union elite that relied on both the qualifications and the stability of its union representatives. In thirty years, there were only two works council secretaries and seven trade union delegates, with the same two members of the company's managerial staff dominating these positions until the end of the 1990s. While the new generation had less trade union experience and fewer qualifications than the previous generation, they benefitted from the theoretical and practical knowledge of their predecessors, consolidated by entire careers dedicated to trade unionism. Antoine, 6 the future CEO, had a BTS, 7 in addition to a career holding both management positions and union responsibilities.

When the company faced a series of restructurings in the 2000s, this trade unionism helped limit the effects. Although the workforce was reduced by 80 per cent in about ten years, the workers managed to avoid the company's liquidation. At each redundancy plan, employee representatives deployed a repertoire of collective actionstoppages, strikes, bringing in the labour inspectorate, etc.combined with management demands, proposing their own plan to revive the plant. At the time, the employees of Helio Corbeil benefitted from particular local circumstances. The town's mayor was Serge Dassault, a powerful French industrialist. 8 In 2004, Dassault acquired the press company that was Helio Corbeil's main customer. Concerned to ease an industrial dispute involving his city's iconic firm, Dassault has repeatedly assured trade unionists that its press company would guarantee the plant's orders. When Helio Corbeil went into receivership in early 2010, the collective of employees already had all the means to take over their company. They had people with managerial know-how and a large support networkone of the leaders belonged to the CGT's national executive. The local configuration gave them financial guarantees to support their bid; not only did the mayor's company undertake to provide the plant with orders, but Dassault granted an interestfree loan of several tens of thousands of euros to build the firm's capital. Added to the severance pay and half a month's bonus for the 80 employees who joined the SCOP, this sum was enough to convince the commercial court of the viability of their cooperative initiative. Nevertheless, the recovery remained a union victory, made possible by a high degree of professionalization among its officials.

2.

Trade union professionalization as an obstacle to the adoption of cooperative practices When in the 1970s the United Kingdom experienced an explosion of corporate occupations and the emergence of 'new-co-operatives', Richard Hyman did not hesitate to describe these experiences as 'qualitative as well as quantitative advances in struggle' (1975). However, he omitted the fact that these initiatives were largely the work of highly qualified sectors, 6

Antoine, aged 40 at the time of the study, became the new manager of the plant. He was formerly the CGT union delegate. We will come back to his story later.

7

The Brevet de Technicien Supérieur (BTS) is the equivalent of the BTEC Higher National Diploma.

8

The son of a well-known industrialist, Serge Dassault was a graduate of the prestigious Ecole polytechnique, CEO of a multinational company, senator of Essonne and as of 2016 had the fifth largest fortune in France with an estimated wealth of 20 billion euros (according to the Challenges.fr website consulted on 23 February 2017).

particularly trade unionists from the engineering sector, who were therefore highly professionalized [START_REF] Yon | Worker Mobilization in the 1970s: Revisiting Work-ins, Co-operatives and Alternative Corporate Plans[END_REF]. In Hélio-Corbeil, this trade union professionalization could also be observed. It is based on a strong verticality in the conditions of collective action, which seems to run counter to the adoption of cooperative practices. The SCOP was prepared in a hurrythe takeover bid was drawn up in less than six monthsand was not the product of a collective initiative; it was driven by CGT trade union representatives who drafted its statutes and lobbied public, financial and judicial institutions during the mobilization process. In fact, contrary to the 'one person, one vote' principle that generally characterizes this type of firm, 9 no election was held to select the new management when the cooperative was established. The union leaders alone appointed the six members of the board, taking on half of the positions themselves, including that of the CEO. While this practice is legal when a SCOP is first formed, 10 it highlights the significant division of labour within the union's activism. The employees were used to relying on this small group of union officials with strong technical, financial, legal and political skills and therefore did not object to the lack of elections. Rescuing the company had been enough to legitimize these unionists' leadership of the new cooperative in the workers' eyes.

During the cooperative's first year of existence, however, the workers' new-found status as co-op members soon raised their expectations, particularly regarding the distribution of profits, which was sometimes a source of dissatisfaction. Some members considered that the amount assigned to the labour share was too low and criticized management's choice to favor savings. 11 This protest soon took the usual forms of the trade union repertoire. Led by Bernard, one of the few union leaders who did not join the board of directors, the dissatisfied members regularly raised their demands at works council meetings. But under the cooperative framework, the SCOP general assembly appeared as a new place to express their complaints. On the eve of the first general meeting, some planned to take advantage of this space to settle the score with the new management, such as François, an operator in his forties:

-How do you see the general meeting that's coming up? -I hope it's going to be war.

-You're hoping for a war? -Just to make it clear to him [Antoine] that we're not sheep. You can't just do what you want. If it comes to a clash, then so be it. [...] We're not children, you can't just explain things to us and that's that. That's why we formed the co-op! It's so we can feel good at work, so we can change direction.

Far from being an isolated feeling, many employeesincluding the CEOexpected the record to be set straight in no uncertain terms at the general meeting. According to my estimates, at least twenty members of the cooperativea quarter of the total workforceregularly expressed their disapproval during the first year. Some considered exercising the right of initiative that would allow elections to the board of directors to be held.12 But against 9 It should be recalled that in cooperative enterprises, the management is regularly elected from among the members, regardless of the amount of their contribution to the company's capital.

10 When a cooperative is founded, the initiators may unilaterally appoint the persons in charge of the company. In this case, however, the initial term is limited to three years instead of six years for a regularly elected board.

11

It should be recalled that the law on cooperatives imposes a minimum distribution of surpluses of 25% towards the labour share, with the rest going to the firm's reserves. all expectations, the confrontation did not take place. As the following excerpts from my observation notes show, no conflict arose when the discussion was opened up to the floor, and the leadership's decisions were endorsed:

[At the end of the meeting] Antoine invites his colleagues to take advantage of the auditor being there and ask questions about the accounts. Nicolas, Georges and a few others encourage Bernard to speak up: 'Bernard, go on!'. He raises his hand, provoking their satisfaction, even the amusement of some of the audience: 'Yes, it's just a small question'. He raises a technical accounting question that is quickly resolved by the auditor. Another worker then points out a typo in the accounts. Finally, Jean 13 questions management about the company's savings [...] The time comes to vote. Antoine calls on his colleagues to vote on the accounts: 'Who is against? Who abstains?' No one is opposed. Bernard abstains, causing a few smiles both in the audience and on the platform. [...] Antoine then has his colleagues vote on two or three other points in the same way and with the same result. Once the vote has been taken, the auditor and the lawyer withdraw. Bernard also leaves. 14While supposedly the high point of the company's democratic calendar, the general meeting was not, in the end, the scene of any attempt to call the new managers to order. As we will see later on, only one grievance, concerning one particular point of work organization, was addressed on this occasion. The gap between the predicted revolt and the widespread passivity during the general meeting clearly demonstrates how little inclined the employees were to make use of the main participatory tool at their disposal. Faced with highly experienced trade union activists, the employees seemed incapable of putting forward their criticisms and positions. Even among managerial staff, the new management seemed to enjoy a legitimacy that forestalled any criticism of its decisions. As some remarks by the production manager (number two in the company's organization chart) show, the new management had a specifically political competence that set it apart from the rest of the employees: [...] he [Antoine] has surprised me. I think he's managing pretty well. Good for him. I'm happy for him, and for us too. You see, some people came to me saying 'Why don't you take the [CEO's] job?' Well no, it's not something I'm into. No. I don't feel up to it. I don't have the gift of the gab. Going to meetings to yack for two hours, I don't know how to do that. I don't like it and I don't know how. I mean, for Antoine, that's every day. I can't see myself going to see Dassault, going to see the clients, and anyway, let's say politically and union-wise, it's a post that was meant for Antoine. […] Between the board of directors being appointed and the lack of opposition to management, everything seemed to point to the emergence of a new vertical power structure in the company. But did the lack of direct confrontation condemn the workers to silence afterwards? We will see in the next section that other forms of participation appeared: the spatial configuration of the company on the one hand and the new sociological composition of the management on the other hand helped give rise to a degree of 'workers' control'. This new form of participation nevertheless remained highly dependent on past trade union capacities and practices. general meeting. They can also trigger a cooperative review, that is, a compliance audit, to ensure the firm is entitled to cooperative status and its tax benefits.

13

Jean, aged 50 at the time of the study, is the 'machine operator' -it is his job to oversee the printing quality of the press.

II. Localized resistance and worker control: forms of participation permitted by the sociological democratization of the factory

1.

The workshop, a space for union counterstrike

While their financial contribution pushed some employees to claim a right to have their say, discontent rarely took the path of open dispute at Helio Corbeil. Yet the employees were not completely helpless in the face of the reconfiguration of power structures in their firm. While they failed to appropriate the designated arenas of deliberation or to voice their criticism of their new leader, they fell back on a much more familiar space: the workshop. The factory occupies 19,000 square metres on a 37,000-square metre plot of land. The work at Helio Corbeil is spread over four large, quite distinct areas. The administration and the electrotyping sector share the same building, but their work areas are separated by a large hall. In an adjacent warehouse, production combines the two main rotary presses and, in a related area, the maintenance sector (see Graph 1). In addition to the geographical distance, there are also different working hours; the administration only works during the day whereas the production department has teams of five workers organized in shifts, headed by a foreman. The teams have often been working together for several years. They know each other well and enjoy a high degree of autonomy in their work. Free from scrutiny, teams form tight-knit groups that allow workers to deploy critical capacities.

One initiative clearly illustrates the possibilities for protest that the workshop's intimate nature affords. In April 2013, the management informed employees with a note on a notice board that it would temporarily modify the work schedule. An Italian company was being brought in to do some work to improve the capture of toluenea solvent used to degrease the cylindersand production would consequently be stopped for three Mondays and Tuesdays in May and June of that year. Management proposed to catch up those lost days on weekends, day and night. The investment, amounting to 200,000 euros, followed a formal notice from the prefect urging the company to recycle its pollutants better or risk a fine. But management pointed out that it would also improve working conditions by reducing the workers' exposure to the hydrocarbon solvent and, moreover, would make it possible to produce and sell larger quantities. Finally, the note stated that three-quarters of the Sunday day shift -12 hourswould be paid at an overtime rate of two times the regular hourly rate. The letter ended by stating that this 'proposal' would be submitted to the following works council meeting for 'approval'. 15The next day, copies of an unsigned handwritten letter were put up in different parts of the factory, particularly on the presses and in the changing rooms. The letter protested against what its author or authors considered the 'unilateral' implementation of this adjusted work schedule. Mentioning respect for 'their] personal and family lives', the letter not only recalled the freedom to refuse this change in their schedule, but also demanded that all Sunday hours be paid in overtime, again in the name of 'the personal and family impact' (underlined in the original). This letter had the effect of encouraging some people to overcome their feeling of 'incompetence' in terms of public speaking. During the two hours of the general meeting, the only opposition that emerged followed on from the letter, as I recorded here:

Antoine then invites them to respond to everything he's said. Once again, the audience is silent. Antoine insists: 'Well then, don't you have anything to say?' After a few minutes of hesitation, Olivier, the driver, calls out to him: 'I have something to say. I don't agree that we should be forced to work on Saturdays and Sundays instead of Mondays and Tuesdays. Frankly, I think we're already giving enough for the co-op. We were asked to make an effort; I think we've already done a lot. But this is too much, you have to respect our family lives.' Antoine reacts immediately: 'To start with, nothing has been imposed. On the contrary, we wanted to approach you as soon as possible to make sure you were informed. When we don't communicate, you're not happy, but when we do you aren't either!' Olivier, supported by others: 'No, no, no, it wasn't clear at all!' Antoine adds: 'In addition, I find that writing an anonymous letter and pasting it all over the factory when you could have come directly to see me, that's really pushing it.' [...] Pascal, Olivier's assistant on the rotary press, pipes up: 'To be honest, I wrote the letter. We wrote it because we couldn't see anyone to talk to.'

This excerpt shows the gap between the new management and the rest of the employees. By stating that they "couldn't see anyone to talk to", while the management is largely composed of CGT members, including the CEO and the steward, the author of the letter confirms the complexity for the grassroots employees to bring their demands directly to their representatives. In this sense, while one might have expected a rapprochement in the framework of a cooperative enterprise between trade unionists and their members, this assertion tends to prove the opposite: trade unionists are no longer bureaucrats, distant but defending their interests, but have become bosses against whom one must fight. From then on, the workshop appears to be a place of retreat that must be mobilized. By seeking to directly address the members on the shop floor on the one hand, and to denounce the employer abuses of a the new direction on the other, this letter brings to light the production of new forms of participation in the Corbeil print works. In this respect, the most recalcitrant worker-members perceived the workshops as a possible 'public space' in Habermas's sense: a place where 'public opinion' is produced that is likely, because of the numbers involved, to challenge and influence the decision-making processes of the firm's leaders.

To do this, they relied on a practice from the traditional repertoire of collective action in their professional and union environment: negotiating acceptance of difficult working conditions against monetary compensation that meets specific and long-established amounts. While criticizing the discrepancies between the employer's discourse and practices is also a classic mode of argumentation, here this strategy took a singular form. By pointing out, right from the introduction, that this change 'is nothing more than "flexibility" [and that] such a proposal from the previous management would have raised a union outcry from our current CEO', 16 the letter picked up on the sociological particularity of a board of directors composed of both former and current union representatives. Its authors knew that by suggesting possible betrayals by leaders who not only had not abandoned their trade union membership, but were now claiming their affiliation with the social and solidarity economy, they were drawing on a register that was doubly sensitive for the leadership. In fact, the strategy paid off. Jérôme, a union delegate and member of the board, was immediately willing to concede to their demands. But apart from this almost natural intermediary, a significant share of the new board members were concerned about the criticism coming from the workshops, quite simply because they still worked there.

Workers' control enabled by the management's new sociological composition

This letter is indicative of how the workers tried to influence the board's decisions, via those board members who shared the workspace with them. Writing had long been a common means of expressing dissatisfaction in the factory, ranging from formal letters addressed to the boss through employee representatives, to tags left on the lockers of managers or colleagues deemed too close to the management. In this case, the letter appeared at a time when some board members were finding pages of the labour code or explicit messages ("CGT=MEDEF" 17 ) stuck on the door of their changing rooms. Nonetheless, what was unprecedented was that the letter's authors displayed it in full view in the workshops. In this sense, the production areas were not only a space for occasional disputes, but the most common source of workers' control over the board of directors.

Board meetings were more often concerned with the company's social climate than with its commercial or financial issues. Board members regularly deliberated together over the criticisms they received from their colleagues, particularly on the admissibility of their remarks. More generally, the board was genuinely concerned about the effects of their decisions. As described in the following excerpt, they often apprehended the reactions of their colleagues when they returned to their workspaces.

The day after that meeting, Antoine calls a 'management information meeting'. He doesn't really have a precise agenda, but he knows he's going to talk about the balance sheet, investments, my presence at the plant, and the plan for a strategic partnership with a book binding company. A whole debate starts up over the announcement of this news. Jérôme stresses the importance of explaining the advantages for the company, but that they should expect more prosaic reactions about parking spaces, lockers or showers. Thierry and Marc, on the other hand, don't want the company's name to be disclosed, because [...] they are convinced that the announcement of the company concerned would spread quickly on the grapevine, knowing that many of Helio's members are in contact with staff from the other company. Antoine seems to think that Thierry and Marc are making a fuss over nothing. In any case, all three -Thierry, Marc and Jérômeinsist on the fact that they are always pounced on by the member employees after the meetings. 18 The fact that the tendering in the print media industry is based on three-year contracts partly explains why the social climate was such a central theme in the board members' discussions.

16

Undated anonymous letter displayed on 11 April 2013 on the premises of Helio Corbeil.

17

MEDEF is the main employers' organization in France.

18

Field notes, 1 October 2012.

During the three-year periods, there was no need to go back over potential clients every month, which freed up time to discuss other topics. Yet the sociological composition of the new board seems to provide more insight into the reasons for the place of social concerns on the management's agenda. Selected by the union delegates at the time of the mobilization, the board members were designated on account of their union involvement in the struggle on the one hand, and for their central roles in the production process on the other. The board also included elected members of the works council and outside directors, as indicated in the following table :   Board By transforming the composition of its board of directors, the plant changed the company's order of priorities, which, as I have shown elsewhere, also focuses on its productive aspects [START_REF] Quijoux | Adieux au patronat. Vulaines-sur-Seine: le Croquant[END_REF]. Above all, without realizing it, it set up powerful mechanisms to regulate the decisions taken at the top. By placing employees who still worked in the workshops on the board, it created a continuum of information, contestation and counter-proposal between the spheres of production and decision-making. When they return to their workspaces (workshops, printing presses or offices), the members of the board of directors were regularly questioned or even harassed about the projects and choices discussed at the board meeting. But this continuum was not reduced to 'coercive' bottom-up forms of action. It also took shape in the struggle to have difficult working conditions recognized, as shown in the following extract:

The first hour [of the board meeting] is spent in a review of the general meeting, which quickly turns towards problems of motivation and delegation within the company. Antoine is worried: 'They haven't understood the stakes of the cooperative. Even though they received training, it's if it doesn't concern them.' [...] Benoît: 'Well, we had a very good example with the whole story of the weekend catch-up,' he says, exasperated. 'The guys don't want to make any effort, not even exceptionally. They don't get it that they'd be doing it for themselves. Plus, we're only asking for that one weekend.' Jérôme, who supported the overtime rate at the works council meeting the day before, counters, saying: 'But for the guys, one weekend more is a lot! You notice it. I think it's totally reasonable, and I won't apologize for it. [...] Working on a Sunday is not the same as working on a Tuesday, so it's normal to expect some encouragement. 20 Here, the presence of Jérôme, the new union delegate, reflects the effects of the sociological transformation of the board of directors. In the face of Antoine's misunderstanding and the moral condemnations of various board members, Jérôme's presence did not only ensure that a dissenting voice was heard. He was also able to clarify or recall more broadly a series of details and socio-professional contexts that the other board members seemed to have forgotten or were taking lightly. If in defending the legitimacy of overtime demands, given the hardship that such a change in the work schedule means for employees, he was fulfilling his role as employee representative, it was also his shared experienced of working with the protesting employees that brought him to hold this position. Of all those present that day at the board meeting, he was the only one to still work shifts 21 in the production sector and to suffer the social effects of a particular work schedule, and therefore to be able to identify them or remind the other members of the board.

***

19 URSCOP is the Association of cooperatives.

20

Field notes, April 26, 2013.

21

As a reminder, work at Helio Corbeil is organized in rotating shifts: one week at night -10pm to 6am; one week in the afternoon -2pm to 10pm; one week in the morning -6am to 2pm; one week off; and finally a weekend (twice 12 hours).

With a few exceptions, trade unionism is going through a more or less intense crisis in most European and North American countries (Kelly, 2004;Andolfatto & Contrepois, 2016). The many factors that explain thisthe massive increase in unemployment, the precariousness of employment and working conditions, bureaucratization, etc.combined with the recurrent attacks on employee representatives, often lead to the loss of the many skills available to trade unions. In the French case, a number of studies have demonstrated the central importance of employee and union representation mechanisms, particularly during restructurings [START_REF] Bacon | Trade union responses to workplace restructuring: exploring union orientations and actions[END_REF][START_REF] Didry | L'entreprise en restructuration[END_REF]Collectif du 9 août, 2017). By taking over the management of their factory, the Helio Corbeil trade unionists reached a further stage in the field of possibilities. While one might question their economic ability to manage a company, the aim here is to examine their ability to democratize their company.

In this article, democracy at work does not seem to show divergent results from the analyses published elsewhere. The lack of board elections and of participation in collective deliberations confirms that employees make very uneven use of traditional democratic spaces, and this depends largely on their respective social and symbolic positions. In this regard, the case of Helio Corbeil clearly shows how the group's own social relations and history inhibited a large share of employees from participating in the formal meetings. When faced with experienced union activists bolstered by the successful takeover, the most critical employees did not feel sufficiently legitimate to voice their criticism in public.

However, despite these indications in support of yet another case of 'democratic degeneration' [START_REF] Michels | Les partis politiques, essai sur les tendances oligarchiques des démocraties[END_REF], my study qualifies the hypothesis of an oligarchic tendency at Helio Corbeil. While the employees seemed to have no means of directly fighting the new management, they were not condemned to 'keep quiet or be spoken for', contrary to Pierre Bourdieu's famous phrase (1982). The study shows that employees preferred to use their own workspaces to challenge the board of directors and to put forward proposals, which they managed to communicate through various channels (protest letters displayed in the workshops and staff representatives who sat on the board). While the factory layout and the work schedules provide explanatory frameworks for the development of these specific forms of participatory attitudes, it is important to emphasize that these are also the result of trade unionism. The development of a trade union elite did not prevent the other employees from forming a set of critical capacities during their careers in the company. These forms of participation, its discursive registers, and its modalities of action were derived from practices learned in the past that were adjusted to the new employment configuration. In this respect, the trade unionists also played a part in creating the conditions for the participatory continuum between the workshop and the board when forming the new board of directors. By having elected staff representatives and, above all, employees who still worked on the shop floor sit on the board, they enabled their colleagues who were less inclined to express themselves in deliberative spaces to express themselves by more suitable means.

In short, while there is every indication that trade unionism does not seem to be more conducive to broad employee participation than other institutions, some of its characteristics, such as the development of critical thinking or the push for employee representation, appear to constitute potential conduits for participatory practices.

In addition, see the survey of recent philosophical debates on the question by[START_REF] Frega | Workplace democracy-The recent debate[END_REF].

The right of initiative is one of the democratic mechanisms of the SCOP. With the support of a minimum of one-fifth of voting members, they may add an item to the agenda and with one-tenth, convene a

Field notes, 17 April 2013.

Memorandum by the CEO of Helio Corbeil entitled 'Reorganization of the work schedule during solvent recovery from 21 May to

June 2013', 10 April 2013.


Ph.D Mohamad El Haj
email: mohamad.elhaj@univ-nantes.fr

Ph.D Roy P C Kessels

Ph.D Jean-Louis Nandrino

Sex differences in Korsakoff's syndrome for inhibition but not for episodic memory or flexibility

Keywords: episodic memory, flexibility, sex differences, inhibition, Korsakoff's syndrome

Background and objectives: While sex differences in cognitive abilities has been extensively studied in healthy populations, little is known about these differences in patients with Korsakoff syndrome (KS).

Methods:

We investigated sex differences in verbal episodic memory, inhibition and flexibility in 25 patients with KS and 25 control participants.

Results: Analysis demonstrated no significant differences between women with KS and men with KS on episodic memory and flexibility, but higher inhibition was observed in women with KS compared to men with KS. Regarding control participants, no significant differences were observed between women and men on inhibition or flexibility, but higher verbal episodic memory was observed in women compared to men. Verbal episodic memory and flexibility seem to be equally affected in women and men with KS, whereas inhibition seems to be more affected in men than in women with KS.

Conclusions and Scientific Significance: Our findings highlight cognitive sex differences in KS in executive function. Critically, our findings are the first quantitative data about episodic performances (and cognitive performances in general) of women and men with KS.

Sex differences 3

Sex differences in cognitive abilities have been studied intensely in healthy populations as well as in patients with amnesia, such as in patients with Alzheimer's Disease. However, little is known about sex differences in cognitive abilities of patients with Korsakoff syndrome (KS). This syndrome refers to an acute neurologic syndrome caused by thiamine deficiency, malnutrition, often in the context of alcohol use disorder [START_REF] Arts | Korsakoff's syndrome: a critical review[END_REF] . Because little is known about sex differences in cognitive abilities of patients with KS we investigated these differences in the syndrome.

KS is mainly associated with severe impairment of episodic memory. Previous studies have consistently demonstrated difficulties in patients with KS to remember the episodic context in which information was encoded (e.g., where, when, and how an item was previously encountered) [START_REF] Holdstock | A comparison of egocentric and allocentric spatial memory in medial temporal lobe and Korsakoff amnesics[END_REF][START_REF] Kessels | Confabulation behavior and false memories in Korsakoff's syndrome: role of source memory and executive functioning[END_REF][START_REF] El Haj | Source monitoring in Korsakoff's syndrome: "Did I touch the toothbrush or did I imagine doing so?[END_REF][START_REF] Postma | Spatial and temporal order memory in Korsakoff patients[END_REF][START_REF] El Haj | Destination Memory in Korsakoff's Syndrome[END_REF][START_REF] Brion | Source Memory in Korsakoff Syndrome: Disentangling the Mechanisms of Temporal Confusion[END_REF][START_REF] Fama | Anterograde episodic memory in Korsakoff syndrome[END_REF][START_REF] Postma | Forgetting the new locations of one's keys: spatial-memory interference in Korsakoff's amnesia[END_REF] . Another characteristic of the decline of episodic memory in KS is confabulations [START_REF] Borsutzky | Confabulations in alcoholic Korsakoff patients[END_REF][START_REF] Aarts | Positive priming and intentional binding: Eyeblink rate predicts reward information effects on the sense of agency[END_REF] , i.e., the tendency of patients with KS to construct fictitious memories without intent to deceive. Although episodic memory impairment has been considered as the main cognitive characteristic of KS, executive dysfunction has been put forward as another prominent cognitive impairment in the syndrome [START_REF] Brion | Revisiting the continuum hypothesis: toward an in-depth exploration of executive functions in korsakoff syndrome[END_REF][START_REF] Van Oort | Executive dysfunction in Korsakoff's syndrome: Time to revise the DSM criteria for alcohol-induced persisting amnestic disorder?[END_REF] , including disinhibition, poor judgment and planning abilities [START_REF] Oscar-Berman | Function and dysfunction of prefrontal brain circuitry in alcoholic Korsakoff's syndrome[END_REF] . Patients also tend to demonstrate impairment on neuropsychological measures of general executive function such as tests of inhibition and flexibility [START_REF] Pitel | Genuine episodic memory deficits and executive dysfunctions in alcoholic subjects early in abstinence[END_REF] . Taken together, KS is mainly characterized by decline of episodic memory and, to some extent, by executive dysfunction; we therefore investigated sex differences for all these cognitive domains in KS.

Sex differences in episodic memory have been widely investigated for healthy individuals, and generally speaking, studies suggest that women perform higher than men on verbal episodic memory tasks [START_REF] Ullman | Sex differences in the neurocognition of language[END_REF] . This advantage has been reported in cross-sectional studies in children, adolescents, and young adults reporting that the female advantage is present in verbal episodic memory tasks from the age of five onwards which lasts until old age [START_REF] De Frias | Sex differences in cognition are stable over a 10year period in adulthood and old age[END_REF][START_REF] Gerstorf | Stability of sex differences in cognition in advanced old age: the role of education and attrition[END_REF] .

Sex differences 4

Women also tend to demonstrate a superiority in some episodic memory tasks involving nonverbal stimuli, such as retention of unfamiliar faces [START_REF] Shapiro | Meta-analysis of facial identification studies[END_REF][START_REF] Megreya | Sex differences in unfamiliar face identification: evidence from matching tasks[END_REF] . Although women tend to perform at a higher level than men when the material to be recalled or recognized is verbal, the reverse can be observed for memory of visuospatial information [START_REF] Herlitz | Sex Differences in Episodic Memory[END_REF][START_REF] Lewin | Sex differences favoring women in verbal but not in visuospatial episodic memory[END_REF] . Overall, a higher performance on tasks of visuo-spatial memory has been observed in men compared to women [START_REF] Voyer | Gender differences in object location memory: a meta-analysis[END_REF] .

Sex differences in memory, and cognition in general, have been attributed to social and biological factors. Social accounts generally assume that most sex differences are a result of differential socialization of women and men, which influence their roles and behavior in childhood, as well as their educational and occupational choices during adulthood, and in turn, cognitive differences [START_REF] Bem | Gender Schema Theory and Its Implications for Child Development: Raising Gender-Aschematic Children in a Gender-Schematic Society[END_REF] . In contrast, biological accounts highlight the involvement of biological factors, such as in levels of sex hormones and genetic factors and their influence on the brain, in sex differences [START_REF] Berenbaum | Sexual differentiation of human behavior: effects of prenatal and pubertal organizational hormones[END_REF] . Another account of sex differences in cognition is the Declarative/Procedural Model [START_REF] Ullman | Sex differences in the neurocognition of language[END_REF] . This model proposes that declarative memory system is tied to the hippocampus, whose function is known to be enhanced by estrogen which may explain the advantage of women on tasks of declarative memory in general and [START_REF] Sherwin | Estrogen and cognitive functioning in women[END_REF] , more specifically, on tasks requiring declarative processing of verbal information.

We focused on episodic memory in KS because decline of episodic memory is considered as the cognitive hallmark of the syndrome 1 . We also compared sex differences for inhibition and flexibility because executive dysfunction, especially decline of inhibition and flexibility, has been considered as a prominent cognitive feature of KS [START_REF] Brion | Revisiting the continuum hypothesis: toward an in-depth exploration of executive functions in korsakoff syndrome[END_REF] .

Sex differences 5

Method

Participants

The study included twenty-five patients diagnosed with KS (13 women and 12 men; M age = 56.56 years, SD = 5.36; M years of formal education = 9.34, SD = 3.05), recruited from several alcohol-dependence medical units and day-care facilities at Lille and Nantes. As a control group, we recruited 25 participants without previous or current substance addiction and without psychiatric or neurological history (13 women and 12 men; M age = 55.56, years, SD = 5.63; M years of formal education = 9.68, SD = 4.22). The control group was matched with the KS group according to sex distribution [χ 2 (1, N = 50) = .00, p = 1.00], age [t(48) = .64, p = .52], and educational level [t(48) = .59, p = .56]. The diagnosis of KS was made by psychiatrists, using the DSM-IV-TR criteria for alcohol-induced persisting amnestic disorder.

The diagnosis was also based on an extensive history of alcoholism and nutritional depletion, notably thiamine deficiency. All KS patients were in a chronic (more than one-year post-onset) and stable condition, but had no confusional Wernicke psychosis at the time of testing or signs of alcohol-related dementia. Participants freely consented to participate and were free to withdraw whenever they wished. The study was conducted in compliance with principles involving human subjects of Helsinki Declaration.

When recruiting participants, we were careful to match women and men with KS

Procedures

We evaluated episodic memory with the verbal memory test of Grober and Buschke on which participants were invited to retain 16 words, each of which described an item (e.g., chair) that belonged to a different semantic category (e.g., furniture). Afterward, participants were invited, as a distraction condition, to count backwards from 374 in 20s. Counting was followed by two minutes of free recall; participants were prompted to recall the previously memorized 16 words. As for inhibition, we used the Stroop Color Word Test which consists of three subtests: word-reading, color-naming and color-word interference. In the word-reading subtest, participants had to read 100 color names printed in black ink. In the color-naming subtest, they had to name the color of 100 colored ink squares. In the color-word interference subtest, they had to name the color of 100 color-words printed in incongruously colored ink (for instance, the word "red" was written in blue). The interference score was used which is the completion time for the interference condition minus the average completion time for word-reading and color-naming; a higher score indicates more interference. As for flexibility, we used the Plus-Minus task, this following the model of Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, Wager [START_REF] Miyake | The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "frontal lobe" tasks: A latent variable analysis[END_REF] who considered this task as a reliable evaluation of cognitive shifting (as well as the Stroop task as a reliable evaluation of inhibition). The Plus-Minus task included three lists, each Sex differences 7 containing 20 numbers. On List 1, participants had to add one to each number, on List 2 they had to subtract one from each number, and on List 3 they had to add and subtract one alternately. Participants were instructed to complete the lists quickly and accurately, and list completion times were measured by a stopwatch. The score referred to the difference between the time participants needed to complete List 3 and the average time that they needed to complete Lists 1 and 2 (the higher the score, the lower the shifting).

Results

Scores are summarized in Table1. We investigated sex differences between patients with KS and control participants regarding episodic memory, inhibition, and flexibility.

Because data were not distributed normally as observed by Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, Mann-Whitney U-test was used for inter-groups comparisons and Wilcoxon's signed-rank test was used for within-groups comparisons. We provided effect sizes using Cohen's d: 0.20= small, 0.50= medium, 0.80= large.

No sex differences on episodic memory in KS

Regardless of sex, lower episodic memory was observed in patients with KS (M= 5.32, SD= 1.34) than in control participants (M= 10.80, SD= 1.73) (Z= -6.11, p < .001, Cohen's d= 3.43). Also, lower episodic memory was observed in women with KS than in control women (Z= -4.26, p < .001, Cohen's d= 3.04), and lower episodic memory was observed in men with KS than in control men (Z= -3.99, p < .001, Cohen's d= 3.97). Critically, no significant differences were observed between women with KS and men with KS (Z = -.57, p = .56, Cohen's d= .23), but higher episodic memory was observed in control women than in control men (Z = -2.92, p = .003, Cohen's d= 1.44).

Sex differences 8

Higher inhibition in women than in men in KS

Regardless of sex, lower inhibition was observed in patients with KS (M= 58.24, SD= 11.45) than in control participants (M= 31.40, SD= 10.97) (Z= -5.32, p < .001, Cohen's d= 2.28). Also, lower inhibition was observed in women with KS than in control women (Z= -3.24, p < .001, Cohen's d= 1.64), and lower inhibition was observed in men with KS than in control men (Z= -3.98, p < .001, Cohen's d= 3.89). Critically, higher inhibition was observed in women with KS compared to men with KS (Z= -2.98, p = .003, Cohen's d= 1.42), but no significant differences were observed between control women and control men (Z= -.99, p = .32, Cohen's d= .40).

No sex differences on flexibility in KS

Regardless of sex, lower flexibility performance was observed in patients with KS (M= 12.24, SD= 6.53) than in control participants (M= 6.29, SD= 4.11) (Z= -3.57, p < .001, Cohen's d= 1.17). Also, lower flexibility was observed in women with KS than in control women (Z= -2.02, p = .043, Cohen's d= .86), and lower flexibility was observed in men with KS than in control men (Z= -2.82, p = .005, Cohen's d= 1.62). Critically, no significant differences were observed between women with KS and men with KS (Z= -.38, p = .70, Cohen's d= .33), or between control women and control men (Z= -.38, p = .70, Cohen's d= .15).

[INSERT TABLE 1 APPROXIMATELY HERE]

Discussion

We investigated sex differences in KS regarding verbal episodic memory and executive function (i.e., inhibition and flexibility). No significant differences were observed between women with KS and men with KS on episodic memory and flexibility, but higher inhibition Sex differences 9 performance was observed in women with KS compared to men with KS. Regarding control participants, no significant differences were observed between women and men on inhibition and flexibility, but higher verbal episodic memory was observed in women than in men.

Countering our hypothesis, we did not find any significant differences between women with KS and men with KS regarding verbal episodic memory. These findings are important because decline of episodic memory has been considered as the cognitive hallmark of KS 1 , our findings extend this consideration by demonstrating that the decline of episodic memory can be observed for both men with KS and women with KS; noteworthy that this assumption is supported by our findings showing lower episodic memory in women with KS compared with control women and lower episodic memory in men with KS compared with control men.

At the clinical level, these findings are important because, to the very best of our knowledge, there is no episodic memory test including normative data about performances of women and men with KS. Our findings address this gap by providing first quantitative data about episodic memory performances (and cognitive performances in general) of women and men with KS. Also, our paper demonstrates how the advantage of women on verbal episodic memory, as observed in normal aging [START_REF] Gerstorf | Stability of sex differences in cognition in advanced old age: the role of education and attrition[END_REF] , disappears in KS. In our view, these findings may have implications for research on sex-differences as our findings illustrate the trajectory of sexrelated performances on episodic memory from normal aging to amnesia. The available evidence suggests that the advantage of women on verbal episodic memory in normal aging turns into a disadvantage in Alzheimer's Disease [START_REF] Ryan | Neuropsychological differences between men and women with Alzheimer's disease[END_REF] ; in other words, and compared with men, women with Alzheimer's Disease tend to demonstrate lower verbal episodic memory than men.

As for KS, verbal episodic memory seems to be equally affected in women and men, at least as observed in our participants.

In addition, we found that flexibility is equally affected in women and men with KS whereas inhibition seems to be more affected in men than in women with KS. Because Sex differences 10 executive dysfunction has been put forward as a prominent cognitive impairment in KS [START_REF] Brion | Revisiting the continuum hypothesis: toward an in-depth exploration of executive functions in korsakoff syndrome[END_REF][START_REF] Van Oort | Executive dysfunction in Korsakoff's syndrome: Time to revise the DSM criteria for alcohol-induced persisting amnestic disorder?[END_REF] , our findings are important as they suggest how executive performances can vary between women and men with KS according to the considered executive function. Regarding inhibition, the higher inhibitory performances in women with KS worth consideration as inhibitory decline has been associated with cognitive decline in general, and more specifically, with perseveration and impulsivity [START_REF] Stuss | Stroop performance in focal lesion patients: dissociation of processes and frontal lobe lesion location[END_REF] . Our findings therefore suggest less inhibitory-related dysfunctions in women than in men with KS, at least as observed in our participants.

Regarding control participants, and consistent with our hypothesis, we observed higher verbal episodic memory performance in women than in men. These findings mirror a body of research in normal aging suggesting a women advantage for verbal episodic. For instance, Jorm, Anstey, Christensen, Rodgers [START_REF] Jorm | Gender differences in cognitive abilities: The mediating role of health state and health habits[END_REF] assessed verbal episodic memory in a cohort aged 20 to 64, reporting that women outperformed men and that the magnitude of this difference did not vary with age. Women's advantage for verbal episodic memory was also reported by Maller, Anstey, Reglade-Meslin, Christensen, Wen, Sachdev [START_REF] Maller | Hippocampus and amygdala volumes in a random community-based sample of 60-64 year olds and their relationship to cognition[END_REF] who reported that women (aged from 60 to 64 years) outperformed men on a test of verbal learning. Interestingly, research in normal aging have demonstrated no significant differences between women and men regarding executive function. For instance, Munro, Winicki, Schretlen, Gower, Turano, Munoz, Keay, Bandeen-Roche, West 32 examined sex differences in a cohort aged from 67 to 89 years. While women outperformed men on tests of verbal learning and memory, men outperformed women on tests of visuo-construction and visual perception, interestingly, women and men were indistinguishable on tests of executive function. Together, our findings mirror evidence obtained from normal aging demonstrating a women advantage for verbal episodic memory but no sex differences for executive function.

Possibly, the sex differences on cognitive tests in KS can be explained as being the result of differential effects of alcohol dependence on brain structure between women and men.

Sex differences 11

For instance, Hommer, Momenan, Kaiser, Rawlings 33 observed that women with alcohol dependence had significantly smaller volumes of grey and white matter than women without alcohol dependence. These differences, particularly in grey matter, were significantly larger than those found between men with and without alcohol dependence. In a similar vein, a study reported lower levels of N -acetylaspartate, a marker of neuronal integrity, in women with alcohol dependence compared with women without alcohol dependence; however, there were no differences in the levels of this marker between men with alcohol dependence and men without alcohol dependence [START_REF] Yonker | Sex differences in spatial visualization and episodic memory as a function of alcohol consumption[END_REF] . Another study reported cortical atrophy after several months of abstinence in men with alcohol dependence, but not in women with alcohol dependence [START_REF] Pfefferbaum | Sex differences in the effects of alcohol on brain structure[END_REF] . The authors attributed these findings to factors such as smoking in men, or possibly to a more rapid recovery of cortical brain volume in women. Building on this available evidence, future research may consider potential relationships between sex-related cognitive performances in KS and the different consequences of alcohol dependence on brain structure between women and men. This paper has several strengths. Because very little is known about sex-differences in cognitive function in KS, our paper sheds the light on these issues by demonstrating similarities and dissimilarities in cognitive function between women and men with KS. Another merit of this paper is the effort that was made to match women and men with KS, as well as control women and men, according to general cognitive ability, age, and educational level; by doing this, we were careful to ensure that any potential sex differences in patients with KS or control participants would not be caused by these factors. Another merit of this paper is that we did not only investigate the main cognitive hallmark of KS (i.e., decline of episodic memory) but also executive dysfunction. However, there is one limitation to this study that should be considered when interpreting our results. We used one test to investigate episodic memory, inhibition, or flexibility. Future research should address this issue through the assessment of Sex differences 12 several episodic memory facets, such as memory for visuospatial information or source memory. The same thing can be said for inhibition and flexibility as these cognitive processes should be investigated with several tests.

To summarize, sex differences in cognition have long been a topic of intense interest.

Regardless of the social and biological debates concerning the basis of any sex differences, these differences do exist. As demonstrated by our findings, these differences exist for inhibition but not for episodic memory or flexibility. This is however a preliminary assumption and further work remains to be done to test cognitive sex-differences in KS more fully.

  regarding general cognitive functioning as assessed with the Mini Mental State Exam [(M women= 25.42, SD= 2.19, M men= 24.20, SD= 2.30, t(23)= 1.13, p = .27] and the same precaution was taken for control participants [(M women= 28.77, SD= 1.36, M men= 29.00, SD= 1.13, t(23)= .46, p = .65]. We were also careful to match women and men with KS Sex differences 6 = .46], and the same precaution was taken for control participants [(M age of women = 56.23, SD= 3.78, M age of men= 54.83, SD= 4.83, t(23)= .61, p = .55; M educational level of women= 9.62, SD= 1.68, M educational level of men= 9.75, SD= 2.06, t(23)= .08, p = .94]. By doing this, we were careful to ensure that any potential sex differences in patients with KS or control participants would not be caused by differences in general cognitive ability, age, or educational level. Note that, by applying these precautions, we excluded six patients with KS and nine control participants from the original sample (original sample of KS patients= 31, original sample of control participants= 34).

according to age [(M women= 57.70, SD= 6.08, M men= 55.60, SD= 4.72, t(23) = 1.26, p = .22] and educational level [(M women= 8.67, SD= 2.67, M men= 8.60, SD= 3.95, t(23)= .75, p

Conflicts of Interest:

The authors declare no conflict of interest