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Lydie Salvayre: La Médaille (The Award)

As the title – more particularly the French title (The Medal) – indicates this is about giving medals. Specifically it is set in a car factory where management is holding a ceremony at which medals are given to employees who either have long service or have performed in an exemplary fashion. As this is Salvayre, this is not recounted as a conventional story but consists entirely of speeches made by a member of the management alternating with the speech by the medal recipient.

Nearly all the speeches are given by men though three are given by women – one by the first shop floor woman employee and another by the widow of a recipient as well as one representing management.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the management speakers , at least initially, are full of praise for the recipients and, in particular, full of praise for themselves for all the wonderful things they are doing to enhance the lives of their employees. Again as we would suspect from Salvayre there is a considerable amount of satire as we learn what management is doing for their employees. Early on the employees are informed that during breaks, rooms will be set aside for employees to go and masturbate and the speaker even tells them how to do it. (They call it moral progress. They even admit that the used to put bromide into their coffee to keep their sexual urges under control.

However there is still control and the manager tells how long they should take over eating, urination and defecation, leaving six minutes for their own activities, presumably including masturbation.

However there are further restrictions, Rest is bad . Idle chit-chat is bad. Sign up for fitness classes. There is even Experience the spiritual dimension of your work.

The first and indeed the majority of medal recipients give the lie to the idea that they are all one happy family. Several of them complain about the unpleasant working conditions – the noise, the dirt, having to stay for hours on end in a most uncomfortable position, constant criticism from their bosses. They also they get home very tired and therefore have little time for family and social life. The first woman employee has, of course additional complaints about sexism and sexual harassment.

Management makes it clear, at least early on, that a factory with human employees is here to stay and is the best model but, later on, we learn from both staff and management that automation is coming in and that more is planned.

They are not a happy bunch. I was dominated by my wife at home and by my foreman at the factory. I was dominated by the machines in the workshop, and by time and exhaustion. I was no longer in control of my life and he runs away but returns at the behest of his mother. He went back to his wife and the same job and now sort of manages.
Most of the employees do not seem to be friends with their workmates and management is concerned about this and tries to encourage friendships not least because they are worried about people badmouthing the factory and the job. The Human Resources Director has even introduced friendship courses. >You will act out your violent feelings towards your superiors by attacking leather dummies. These dummies have easily recognisable faces. Mine, I must admit, is very true to life We do not know they fare but we can guess.

There is not surprisingly a lot of anti-management feeling and management is aware of this. not least because they have informers who report back to them. Must we drum it in yet again? You do not, gentlemen, have any cause to complain. . Well, actually, yes they do. But they can snitch on their fellow workers and, if they put their name and address on the form, they will get a bonus.

During this session they keep offering new benefits from a cafeteria shared with management to (very) long-term mortgagees and even cemetery plots for sale. Sadly, we do not see the reactions of the employees to these benefits.

We also get the big picture. Management complains of the financial decline of the company, whch they blame, at least in part, on the moral decline in the workforce – laziness, unjustified criticism, a high level of absenteeism and so on but also on the worldwide economic crisis.

They have some drastic solution such as flying immigrants back to their country of origin!
The y even have an external social scientist who divides workers into three blatantly racist categories: the true worker,, the Mediterranean worker and the coloured and assimilated worker. “The true worker farts more often than the other types of workers, a detestable habit that remains to this day unexplained. We know that there are non-French workers in this factory.

While these events have been going on, there have been other things going on in the factory. It seems that unruly behaviour has developed in some workshops and as each management representative speaks we get further reports as to what is going on. Management is of course highly critical and talks of agitators (extremists, Spanish for the most part.) and severe punishment. Eventually they break into the conference room where the event is being held, with unexpected results.
Lydie Salvayre delivers a wonderful satire on labour relations in a French car factory poking fun at a completely out of touch management which comes up with a host of dubious solutions which are all to often ludicrous or simply stupid . Those of us that have worked in any largeish organisation may well have seen similar schemes by management. Many years ago I spent a summer working in a wooden crate factory in the south of France with a lot of immigrant workers and, I must say I enjoiyed it as everyone got on well but I suspect Salvayre’s car factory does have some connection with what really happens in large factories.

Publishing history

First published in 1993 byÉditions du Seuil

First published in English in 1997 by Four Walls Eight Windows
Translated by Jane Davey