This article makes the hypothesis that vocational training has a double role. The first (and traditional) role targets the satisfaction of business operating requirements in terms of individual and collective abilities. The second, reinforced by the evolution of the conditions of competitiveness, targets the compliance of workers to an identity model promoted by those in charge of the companies. This function is analysed from a historical perspective, relating the organizational models to methods of assigning an identity to the workers, and leading to a warning against the risks of exclusion made in the name of profit, with impunity and without ethics, on the part of supporters of the liberal economy.