The Compagnons du Devoir, an organisation of artisans and craftspeople dating from the Middle Ages, offered a series of open days in March.
There were events in most of France’s major cities to promote craftsmanship and its flagship apprenticeship programme, the Tour de France, which sends craftspeople around the country to learn skills from masters.
The response was positive, with 10,548 applications submitted for 2025/26, general secretary of the association Patrick Chemin told The Connexion.
The profiles of applicants were also more diverse, with a greater number of women, students with degrees, and adults looking for a career change expressing interest in joining – encouraging news for an organisation that has survived centuries of trends and changes.
Last year, The Wall Street Journal described how more young workers in the US are going into trades, nudged by a combination of rising pay and new technologies in plumbing and electrical jobs.
“How Gen Z is becoming the Toolbelt Generation,” its headline ran. “There is no equivalent ‘Génération Compagnons’ in France, per se,” Mr Chemin told The Connexion, “but the younger generation are looking for a job that provides meaning.
Ilan DEUTSCH
“Crafts are increasingly chosen as a calling or with the aim of building a long-term career.”
The association is France’s biggest craftsmanship programme – an institution that most French people have at one time dreamt of joining.
Its precise origin is hard to trace. Legend has it that compagnonnage has a lineage going back to the construction of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, which dates from between the 10th and 6th Centuries BC.
Evidence that it existed after 1268 is found in the fact that craftsmen united around societies against publication of a book listing trades and crafts, approved by Louis IX, in which workers were forbidden to leave their master without consent.
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These societies grew against a backdrop of successive laws from kings that looked to contain their influence, ultimately unsuccessfully.
Their power comes from recognition that the Compagnons du Devoir built France’s cathedrals – and continue to guarantee their upkeep. Look no further than efforts to repair Notre-Dame after the 2019 fire.
Jules DESPRETZ
It shone a light on the work of France’s craftspeople – and renewed interest in joinery and carpentry jobs.
“There was a ‘Notre-Dame effect’ on the trades involved,” Mr Chemin confirmed. In their 17th and 18th-Century heydays, the compagnons were the equivalent of the HR department of, sometimes, entire cities.
They organised strikes, controlled who was employed, and even banned some workers. Historian François Icher told France Culture in 1994: “Much like any other social group, compagnons have their own vocabulary – that of the trade. It includes tools, objects, people and symbols.”
A popular tale from the 19th Century describes how a judge once asked a compagnon to recount a site accident.
His response, in which he referred to those involved as animals, is virtually incomprehensible to a layman: “Moi le chien, j’étais ici et le singe était à mes côtés. Alors au moment du levage, la chèvre à biquer, tuant le renard, blessant le lapin et cassant la patte au loup.”
Some compagnons’ expressions have made their way into modern French. An example is the word sacquer, which can mean to be fired, receive a bad mark or be annoyed by someone.
In the context of the compagnons, it referred to someone who was ordered to pack his bag (faire son sac) and go on a tour following a serious mistake.
Another linguistic quirk is in the tradition of choosing a compagnon name. This combines a person’s region of origin with a value they espouse.
One of the most famous Compagnon monikers is Ardéchois coeur fidèle (Ardechois the faithful-hearted), the title of a six-part TV show broadcast between November and December 1974 on France 2.
It followed Toussaint Rouveyre, a captain in Napoleon’s defeated army, who returns to his native Ardèche and becomes a Compagnon carpenter – Ardéchois coeur fidèle – to avenge his brother’s death from a rival compagnon.
Along the way, he meets and makes alliances with Pontoise la belle parole (Pontoise the well-spoken).
The show had a positive reception in France, largely because it went against longstanding clichés that compagnons were part of a secret society with impenetrable codes and dialects.
Entry to the Compagnons du Devoir is open from ages 15 to 25, with 36 crafts available covering everything from roofing to baking.
“Our model is built to last. Youngsters gain knowledge of a craft, travel around France and abroad, and live and progress within a community of craftspeople.
“This gives them the motivation to pass on what they have learned to the next generation,”
