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Like other managers, executives who manage ’labour relations’ – e.g. who manage collective bargaining meetings and, more broadly, relations with trade unions and employee representatives – present their action as fundamentally rational. However, the activity of steering labour relations raises strong emotional issues. Indeed, it implies engaging in face-to-face interactions, sometimes conflictual, with employees or trade unionists. Based on the study of the preparation of a downsizing by a team of managers and consultants, this article highlights the significant individual and collective emotional work to which this mission gives rise and examines the reasons for this. This collective work aims, through different discourses and practices, to help the managers who have to deal with the laid-off employees to ward off their fear, on the one hand, and to moderate their empathy and their possible feeling of guilt, on the other hand.