Journal article: Although the practices of employees with regard to internal corporate affairs and collective bargaining have been studied independently, this article shall investigate, in the case of the French private sector, how these different practices – ranging from workplace elections to strikes – intersect and connect. It shall also uncover their determinants and recent evolution by analyzing answers to the “REPONSE” survey [Relations professionnelles et négociations d’entreprise/Employement Relations and Collective Bargaining]. The majority of employees are little mobilized in the company, while a minority is very involved in protest mobilizations in particular. These two extremes point to the existence of two mechanisms: “de facto exclusion”, defined as the inability to participate given the absence of a ballot or other organized collective action, and “self-exclusion”. The former appears to be highly dependent on the internal logic of the economic field. On the contrary, self-exclusion is primarily determined by the individual characteristics of employees themselves: more precarious employees and more senior executives managers tend to have limited participation, especially during workplace elections. In addition, participation within the corporate sphere has been subject to decline since the beginning of the 2000s, even as conflict has grown within certain segments of the salaried workforce.