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Most positions in small employers associations have not financial compensation but they require to be in professional activity. How can representatives live “for” this commitment without living “from” it and run their business ? Based on an investigation into a small retailers organization, this article studies the contribution of the family in resolving this paradox. As a collective body whose members are caught up in a system of material and emotional interdependence, the family partially runs the store and participate, behind the public scenes, in employer organization. Employer organization works on a double exclusion: exclusion of individuals who cannot use the labor force of family members to get involved, and exclusion of family members who work in the backstage. Their work is made invisible and appropriated by the representative of employers organizations and by these organizations.