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Taken from the e-correspondence of a militant young CGT metalworker, the factory “diary” presented in this article invites consideration of the reasons and the manner of young workers’ commitment to trade union action. These accounts of everyday activism in a small establishment also throw light on the ordinary conditions of militant effort so often neglected by the analysts of “deunionization” and never recognized by journalists. They show how worker unionists, already forced by international competition to defend their social guarantees, must also deal with the thousand and one obstacles to collective action that a tough environment, a precarious economic situation and weakened forms of sociability and solidarity put in their way. This document also displays then the diversity of resources mobilized by individual activists continuing and renewing the union effort against all odds. From workers’ housing estate to factory by way of a university detour, the author’s “diary” traces a trajectory at once singular and banal, showing the conditions under which resources acquired through schooling but subsequently devalued on the labour market may find their way into trade union activism as a reconverted capital.