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In response to the difficulty of compiling reliable statistical data on how business restructuring is implemented, this article offers an institutional and statistical analysis of the way companies manage employees involved in reorganizations that entail job losses. It demonstrates that employers use a broad range of legal procedures to reduce their workforce, above and beyond economic redundancies. These types of layoffs developed progressively from the 1960s on, mainly driven by the public authorities, and they increasingly involve a legal situation whereby the employee agrees to his contract being terminated and to the terms of an assistance package. The effect has been to reduce tensions over restructuring as social and legal challenges to the process have decreased.