Activities of subcontractor first-line supervisors and MSD prevention: collective regulations with employees of the user company

The way the work process is organized for subcontracted work can give rise to the employees of the subcontractor being organizationally dependent on the employees of the client. Such dependency can limit the situational room for maneuver that the subcontractor’s employees have, thereby increasing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). First-line supervisors constitute the last level that can influence this dependence in the way they participate in organizing the work of the operatives they supervise.
Our aim is to identify with subcontractor teams working in meat-cutting how first-line supervisors regulate this dependence in favor of preventing MSDs in the supervised operatives.
The method used was a qualitative research based on an analysis of the activities of two subcontractor first-line supervisors in two distinct meet-cutting companies. Our methodology used observations of the activities (spread over different times of days and years) of these supervisors in relation to situations of organizational dependence that arose in the activity of the supervised team. The supervisors were then shown video recordings of their activities to identify the underlying aims of the observed situations.
Both of the observed supervisors sought to limit the organizational dependence by regulating collectively with the employees of the client company. That regulating took the form of the first-line supervisor cooperating with and helping, in a spirit of mutual assistance, cutting operatives or supervisors, depending on the production being observed. The mutual assistance observed made it possible to room for maneuver in this situation for the supervised operatives. The aims expressed, performance or health, vary depending on the supervisor and the representation of the risk.
Better understanding conditions for development of collective regulations between the subcontractors and the employees of the user company is a relevant avenue to be pursued for improving the prevention of MSDs in subcontracted work. We need to understand goals pursued by employees of the user company.