L'"exception française" tant vantée est bien vivante quand il s'agit de syndicalisme. La France a le plus faible taux de personnes syndiquées : seulement 8%/Financial Times
| How French unions could find themselves irrelevant The vast Place d’Italie in the south-east of Paris will be brought to a standstill today as hundreds of thousands of banner-waving protesters mount a show of strength against the labour reforms that have convulsed France. While the level of turnout could determine whether Dominique de Villepin, prime minister, is able to maintain his government’s fragile unity over changes to employment law, he is not alone in struggling to hold together a common front in the face of spiralling discontent. The leaders of France’s historically divided labour movement acknowledge that they, too, are at a turning point. Failure to sustain a united front will not only encourage the government further to roll back labour rights. It may also deny unions the chance to woo a new generation of workers, as many of those who have formed its backbone approach retirement. The flashpoint for this latest and perhaps biggest protest is the “first-job contract”, which is designed to encourage companies to employ more of the country’s 400,000 young job-seekers by making it easier to dispense with their services. In recent weeks protests at what critics see as an affront to France’s fiercely protected labour market have spread across the country – into the universities, on to the streets and erupting into violence that has scarred even the most genteel quarters of central Paris. But the protests have also given France’s labour movement the will to unify for the first time in decades. Pictures last week of leaders from the five biggest unions – some of whom hold long-standing and very personal grudges against each other – hammering out a common strategy before meeting Mr de Villepin on Friday were greeted as historic by a French media more accustomed to charting the movement’s fratricidal battles than its rare moments of amity. <<< Des photos montrant la semaine dernière des leaders des 5 plus grands syndicats - parmi lesquels certains entretiennent de profondes querelles anciennes et très personnelles les uns envers les autres - forgeant une stratégie commune avant de rencontrer Monsieur de Villepin vendredi dernier ont été saluées comme historiques par les media français plus habitués à obsever leurs guerres fratricides que leurs rares moments d'amitié >>> Union leaders know they must now demonstrate their capacity to stop this latest job reform if they are to have a hope of shaping the industrial relations landscape in the years to come. But there is a second reason why France’s two biggest unions cannot afford to break ranks. Both Bernard Thibault, head of the CGT, France’s most powerful union, and François Chérèque, his counterpart at the reformist CFDT, will be seeking new mandates from their members at crucial congresses in the coming weeks. And both leaders have been weakened by internal divisions that call into question the strategies they were originally elected to implement and that typify the problems facing France’s labour movement. The much-vaunted “French exception” is alive and well when it comes to trade unionism. Despite one of the highest number of unions in Europe – the legacy of successive labour movement splits – it has one of the lowest rates of membership. Just 8 per cent of the active population is unionised, against 13 per cent in the US, 26 per cent in the UK and more than 70 per cent in Norway, Sweden and Finland. <<< L'exception française" tant vantée est bien vivante quand il s'agit de syndicalisme. Bien qu'ayant le plus grand nombre de syndicats en Europe - héritage de scissions successives de mouvements de travailleurs - la France a le plus faible taux de personnes syndiquées. Seulement 8% de la population active est syndiqué, contre 13% aux US, 26% au Royaume-Uni, et plus de 70% en Norvège, en Suède et en Finlande. >>> Insiders say this dispersion of low membership, mainly concentrated in the public sector, among so many different organisations is the biggest problem facing the French labour movement today. Despite a formidable capacity to get people on to the streets, fiercely individual trade unions have been unable to stop a series of economic reforms, such as those on pensions, education and the privatisation of public services. Grassroots frustration has given rise to a growing phenomenon of spontaneous strikes, further undermining the traditional model of organised labour. The CGT itself is a carefully crafted federation of 20,000 unions of varying size and it has had difficulty in mastering its different factions. Its congress next month will be a test of Mr Thibault’s authority over this fractious organisation, which since its foundation in 1895 has been shaped by a culture of class struggle and conflict. In the plans he has set out for the future direction of the union, once closely linked to the Communist party, negotiation is given equal weight to conflict as a weapon in the CGT’s labour relations armoury. “For me that is the most striking part of the document,” says Joël Decaillon of of the European Trade Union Confederation. “Negotiation is seen as an essential element. That is a very new element for the CGT.” Elected seven years ago on a platform of reform, the charismatic and youthful Mr Thibault was best known as the leader of highly successful strikes by rail workers in 1995, which helped deal a fatal blow to the reformist government of Alan Juppé. With these credentials, the long-haired and militant Communist party member was seen to be the only candidate capable of reviving the CGT’s flagging membership with a policy of openness and pragmatism. But he has struggled to impose his reforms on an organisation where conservatives representing traditional industries, and loyal to the union’s historic Communist links, still control the most powerful branches of the CGT. Didier Le Reste, his successor as head of the rail workers’ union, has openly voiced disagreements with Mr Thibault and may even challenge him for the leadership at the congress.
Internal discord was humiliatingly laid bare last year when Mr Thibault’s plea for the CGT to remain neutral in the referendum on the European constitution was overwhelmingly rejected by his grassroots. “Thibault is conscious of the problems the CGT faces but he is a bit powerless to change things,” says a former senior member of a rival union. Yet business leaders remark on Mr Thibault’s dual persona: the public face of prudence and a private one of pragmatism. “He pushes change each time he thinks he can succeed,” says the chief executive of a former state company where the CGT is the leading union presence. “From the outside he seems very cautious but he probably does the maximum possible.” Mr Thibault himself argues it is vital the differences are aired. “We cannot continue to be organised in the same way as we have been for decades, when the structures of companies and economies are changing so dramatically. That sparks strong debate internally,” he says. “But I don’t take the debate at the congress as a sign of crisis. We need democratic debate to advance because the problems we face are complex. Debate over strategy is desirable in a democratic organisation.” The current dispute over the first-job contract could offer Mr Thibault a heaven-sent opportunity to restore his credibility with CGT malcontents. On the other hand, say some, it could make his reform programme even more difficult. Victory after a rising crescendo of demonstrations is more likely to reinforce the value of conflict over negotiation, pushing the CGT further to its traditional position on the extreme and confrontational left. That could be good news for the more centrist CFDT, which lost 11 per cent of its membership to the CGT when it compromised on controversial pension reforms three years ago. Mr Chérèque, whose own congress is in June, has been struggling to recover ever since. The labour movement’s current solidarity on first jobs may help restore his image as a tough negotiator. But, equally, it could be hard for Mr Chérèque and Mr Thibault to overcome their personal animosity towards each other in the interests of unity. The two men fell out spectacularly during the pension negotiations of 2003, each accusing the other of betrayal – Mr Chérèque angry over the CGT’s combative stance and Mr Thibault scathing about the CFDT’s decision to agree a last-minute deal on its own. Nevertheless, Mr Thibault says he is optimistic about the labour movement’s ability to unite and there is no better example than the battle against the CPE. “This new contract represents a real revolution in French social legislation. It has even made it possible to bring together worker and student unions,” he says. But the real challenge will be to take this co-operation to another level and build a coherent labour movement that truly represents French workers, in contrast to today’s fragmented landscape. Mr Thibault says: “Each union has to develop common objectives by asking workers what they want . . . Our history has been made by an accumulation of divisions and splits. But that process has reached its limit. It is a process that is suicidal for the labour movement.”
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