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Since 1975, the French metalworking industry started to reform the classifications and replaced the previous qualifications, created by Parodi in 1945, by new classifications based on the individual skills model and the logic of careers individualisation. Many studies consider the classifications as source of the organisation they contribute to regulate. This paper rather examines their play in the whole relations at work, on the basis of shop situations, at assembly lines in Peugeot-Sochaux during the second half of the 1990s. Then, the supposed fluidity of occupational trajectories and the logic of individual skills declared by the new system of individualisation are counteracted or even overpowered by the rigidities of work organisation combined with employment freeze and with its effects on workforce management.