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The on-going process of modernization, which destabilizes work and employment, highlights some important features of the way wage-earners manage their relations to work. Those features, which are less apparent in classical periods, and deal with subjectivity and privacy are determinant for the understanding of the way people cope with the constraints of their job and come to accept it. Through many small arrangements and compromise solutions, they succeed in give a meaning to their job which is supposed to be strictly determined by the clauses of the capitalistic wage contract. The authors gather some case studies results to analyze the destructive or potentially liberating effects of the new management strategies upon these arrangements.