COMMENTS:REPORTS FROM ABROAD-France: Unions on the Defensive
Wieviorka, Michel
PARIS — A deep crisis besets the French labor movement. Membership is shrinking, so is the percentage of unionists who pay dues regularly. The lifelong absorption of the rank and file in...
...Unions have given workers some control over production and working conditions...
...It inclines toward simple economic demands and may be moved to substitute acts of violent protest for bargaining...
...This change is forcing the labor movement to ask itself two basic questions...
...In view of this crisis, there are those who, without dismissing present problems, cite the workers' plight a century ago and point to the great gains achieved since then...
...The French unions have also been weakened by long-standing divisions that may be more intractable today than ever before...
...If the unions refuse to get involved, they lose a segment of their sympathizers and members...
...By accepting a management role, the union identifies with the institution or company in which it operates and loses the ability to rally the workers...
...At a lower level, the union negotiates for wider influence and greater benefits...
...3) The FO (Force Ouvriere—Labor Force), founded in 1947 by unionists who had walked out of the CGT, is staunchly anti-Communist, which precludes any joint action with the CGT...
...But today, for various reasons, this classic model is collapsing...
...The second, how can they understand and help the struggling new players...
...The production manager, in effect, is the boss...
...But the significance of this relationship is weakening...
...The first is, how should unions react...
...It inspires a struggle for broader aims, and it introduces the vision of a society governed by workers...
...At best it becomes an agent for modernization and at worst it helps train tomorrow's elites...
...The CFDT seeks to ease labor's transition into the postindustrial age...
...There is still a wide gap between the membership, which comes up with demands pertaining to wages, working conditions, job security (somewhat selfishly at times), and a leadership that acts out of political considerations, at times agreeing to compromises the membership still finds unacceptable...
...It's not only the rise of protectionist tendencies, and their corollary—the emergence of wildcat movements, splinter groups, and outbursts of rage like those that occurred in France and Italy in the 1970s—that threaten the unions...
...Today the labor movement is mainly on the defensive...
...2) The CFDT (Confederation Francaise Democratique du Travail), which presents itself as an "alternative left" independent of any political party, is having trouble defining its role...
...There are also older but now growing tendencies toward joint or participatory management, implying minimal confrontation...
...The CFDT has been trying to speak for a variety of interests: for traditional workers, along with new social movements—feminists, ecologists, antinuclear groups, middle-management people eager for modernization—as well as for a still undefined new proletariat, insecure, often in temporary jobs, whose major concerns are their economic problems...
...And they pose intractable problems for unionization...
...Hasn't the union movement then fulfilled its historic mission, establishing a solid basis for furthering the interests of the working class...
...The inspiration to risk major struggles no longer derives from a general plan, guiding immediate achievements toward a better future...
...On the highest level, the union is a political player...
...It isn't easy to combine these three levels, except as a force of opposition and by using purely defensive tactics...
...At the same time, computerization threatens the service sector, particularly in banking and insurance...
...Quite recently, for instance, a draft agreement providing for flexibility in lay-offs, which had been all but accepted by the CFDT, FO, CFTC, and CGT leaderships, had to be scrapped because every membership group voiced fierce opposition...
...How then can the labor movement manifest itself if class consciousness is on the wane...
...The two groups have different problems and engage in separate battles...
...It sets itself a limited role, principally to expand, or at least to maintain, collective bargaining...
...Union struggles now are essentially defensive, focused on lost jobs and plant closings...
...In his study of working-class consciousness, Alain Touraine clearly illustrated how the large metallurgical factory, the paradigm of a Taylor-run plant, became the stronghold of class consciousness...
...The FO is distancing itself more and more from any appeal to class consciousness...
...Moreover, they force the unions to do battle against separatist tendencies within the workers' movement...
...In the face of social and economic changes that are intensifying its crisis, it has no perspective or major projects to look forward to...
...This leads to demands for state control, operating through a political, revolutionary or social democratic party, pursuing social action right through to the state level...
...Each union has answered this question in its own way, and in almost every case by trying to combine three different levels of action...
...In recent years, jobs in industry have been eliminated by the tens of thousands, especially in labor's strongholds—steel, naval construction, auto, and chemicals...
...It's the CGT, for example, that has been most hostile to the antinuclear movement and the political ecologists—while the FO has always stated that such issues or movements were outside its purview...
...The CGT is still faithful to the classic labor model...
...So LONG as it is the truest expression of workingclass consciousness, the labor movement can impart a deeper meaning to an endless sequence of otherwise limited job actions...
...The other way has been 283 to state clearly that these new movements are not part of the CFDT, that it cannot be directly responsible for implementing their programs, but that it will help by giving them political support...
...The lifelong absorption of the rank and file in union activities is virtually gone...
...In extreme cases these tendencies result in the dissolution of social relationships that up to now have both linked management and labor and pitted them against each other...
...For them, conflicts originating in the plant or workshop no longer occupy center stage...
...Along with the technological changes—robotization, automation, and so on—has come a change in labor relations...
...One of them has been to try, specifically in the chemical and agrifood industries, to voice the concern of these new groups regarding production and labor problems...
...But if they tolerate such struggles, they lose credibility and their ability to speak for labor as a whole...
...The former may want a say in workplace management...
...This has prompted Alain Touraine to call the CFDT a political player, because it has been helping the new social movements, which are often weak, poorly organized, and lacking the means for political action...
...These tendencies encourage struggles about job categories and "protectionist" demands...
...Wherever industry has been modernized, work no longer follows the Taylor pattern...
...The other, the proletarian consciousness of unskilled labor, is of quite a different order...
...Whether negotiating about broken windows in a locker room, bargaining for a raise, or organizing a strike for new rights, such struggles have some connection to the vision of an overall societal conflict...
...Working-class consciousness originates in the factory, or workshop, but it does not stop at conflicts related to working conditions...
...Gone, too, are the charismatic leaders who could galvanize the masses...
...the latter may simply want a wage hike...
...In the most up-to-date plants there are very few skilled workers or people directly engaged in production...
...Union officials are increasingly preoccupied with managerial functions and negotiations—or in attending political meetings...
...For one thing, in the very industries where the model makes most sense, deindustrialization is most widespread...
...The decline of class consciousness means, then, the end of the industrial and the advent of the postindustrial society...
...At the lowest level, it continues to exert pressure within the plant to defend workers' interests...
...Thus the CFTC (Confedereation Francaise des Travailleurs Chretiens—French Confederation of Christian Workers) has not yet recovered from the 1964 exit of its "Reconstruction" group, which then formed the CFDT [aligning with socialists and others, making it the second largest, if troubled, French labor federation...
...This is no small task, and neither is it an easy one...
...Unfortunately, this view ignores a basic issue—the 281 decline in working-class consciousness...
...Let's be clear about it: the confrontations on these issues have abated considerably since the late '70s and are no longer so urgent on the agenda...
...Skilled labor too is threatened in the Taylor-run factory as the skilled worker loses his occupational autonomy...
...It has actively sought to address feminist concerns within its ranks by giving women greater access to leadership posts...
...It has done so by associating itself with the ecological struggles and by showing the dangers of pollution both for the workers inside the plant and the people outside it...
...it seems aloof from social and cultural changes and has taken on the basic task of promoting negotiation...
...Indeed, the unions lifted labor out of its wretched state...
...WRITING THE LABOR MOVEMENT'S HISTORY does not mean writing the history of the Communist, Socialist, or any other party...
...More than any other player, it is striving to minimize the negative effects of a change it knows to be inevitable...
...The labor force falls into two major categories: "privileged" workers, who often enjoy favorable contracts, guarantees, benefits and the rest of the wage-earners, those in small, subcontractor companies, temporaries, substitutes, and so on...
...The union may reject such struggles, if only because they widen the gap among workers, partly by favoring those already high on the social scale...
...Although it is not the sole cause of labor's troubles, this evolution is certainly a basic ingredient...
...Alas, things are not that rosy and simple...
...One finds instead a growing number of technicians, draftspeople, wage-earners in white lab coats, or operators without any specific skills who are in charge of basic control, or of cleaning and maintenance...
...It is born in the haunting fear of poverty, the feeling of being left out, the absence of any political independence...
...1) The CGT (Confederation Generale du Travail—General Confederation of Labor) clings faithfully to its traditional model of class action, as an extension of political action, and appears to be increasingly dependent on the Communist party...
...Its role remains an essential one, nevertheless...
...The adversary is the one who brings in unskilled workers to perform assemblyline tasks in a prescribed rhythm, governed by the time clock...
...The labor movement developed in two major ways...
...The CGT, which is strongly identified with industrial production, has generally been hostile to, or shown a lack of understanding of, the new players who have lately emerged within French society...
...The problem is not to mobilize the workers in the name of a global vision as much as to avoid the breakdown of society, mitigating the damage caused by the changes, fighting the brutality of some of management's solutions, and opposing concessions forced on the unions...
...The scientific management of labor, exemplified by the Taylor method that was introduced in this century, led for a time to the integration of these two forms of consciousness...
...They pushed through protective legislation to ensure the workers' safety...
...It no longer aspires to lead society as a whole but, within an institutional system where it 282 has secured a place for itself, it strives to have a say in decisions that determine the political life of the nation...
...THE TRANSITION toward a postindustrial society generates three different attitudes...
...The rank and file regarded the provisions on job security, arrived at for the sake of national solidarity, as tantamount to give-backs...
...This means the end of stop-watch management and the strong consciousness it generated...
...Still, this decline, whatever its reasons, does not have to drag the labor movement down with it...
...This is what the CGT is now doing for strictly political reasons dictated by the breakup of the left's coalition...
...The existence of smaller federations merely exacerbates the division within labor...
...Merging skilled and unskilled labor indeed promoted class conciousness...
...It regarded the general strike, for example, as an instrument for bringing about the workers' society...
...New players have emerged— women's movements, ecologists, antinuclear groups, and others...
...One reflected the pride of highly skilled workers, to whom the bosses were merely useless middlemen interposed between production and the market...
...Whenever it does express itself, it reflects an increasingly rigid, even sectarian fundamentalism...
...Isn't this crisis the price we have to pay for success...
...It would often focus on demanding some form of class power, but it was also capable of engaging in negotiation...
...The attitude of the three major French unions in the face of the new social movements is determined by these concepts...
...It wants to plan for the future and not to overlook the disadvantaged segment of labor...
...Over the last century two forms of workingclass consciousness, distinct from and even sometimes opposed to one another, were preeminent...
...Such developments are forcing the French unions to look for new ways to integrate labor action...
...Yet the current situation leads it, on the one hand, to attach growing importance to political action and a policy of deliberate nationalization and economic development through consumption and, on the other hand, to a very defensive stance...
...This type of consciousness, generally, opposed political mediation...
...Translated from the French by HELEN KATEL 284...
...Today no important decisions are made on industrial issues—the restructuring of industry, the struggle against inflation, social security—without taking labor's views into account...
...They operate outside the realm of labor and production...
...It requires, rather, an analysis of how working-class consciousness developed, and why it is disintegrating today...
...It consistently emphasizes the need for complying with the democratic process, in contrast to revolutionary change...
...The CFDT has reacted to the new social movements in two ways...
Vol. 32 • July 1985 • No. 3
