The origin of this work lays on the observation, during the 1990s in Russia, of an original socioprofessional composition of unemployment. White-collar workers (ITRs ) constituted the greatest part of the workers registered as job seekers, while the situations wanted by companies from job centres concerned skilled manual workers mainly. To interpret this phenomenon, we draw the hypothesis of a continuation of the practices of industrial work management relying on a social construct which structuring role and time-continuum indicate to turn towards a perspective which takes the role of institutions into account. We suggest to interpret this social construct as the result of a set of social relations. These social relations can be observed at the firm level. They have led to the increase in value of the position of the working labour force in three fields : the system of “generation of competence”, the working process, and industrial relations of the socialist firm. On the other hand, the ITR categories are discredited and under-employed. But, to a large extent, these facts kept on happening after 1991. This social construct has a certain consistency which will be qualified as “societal”. These interacting social relations endowed with a capacity of reproduction, would exert a “societal effect” on the labour market and would account for the battle of wills favourable to blue-collar workers who were already present during the Soviet era.