The myths about French unions

...You can use your credit card on our Web site (www.dissentmagazine.org) or on the order form printed in this issue...

...in Paris, and so hundreds of thousands of people filled the gloomy streets each morning and evening, trying to get to and from work on foot or by bicycle...

...Union presence (though not membership) is encouraged, and even subsidized, by the network of social representatives elected by workers by law...

...The first is that union dues cover an ever smaller proportion of union budgets...

...Perhaps more to the point, strikes affecting more than one enterprise ("generalized strikes") have declined the most and are now relatively rare...

...However, the most important indicator of union support is levels of support for strike 14 n DISSENT / Summer 2008 movements...

...It was also important because it would make it difficult for unions, employers, and the state to engage in the kind of irresponsible actions that have become typical in collective negotiations in France...

...Although, on balance, the large union confederations appeared to gain from the provisional agreement on rules of repreSentation, by January 2008, it appeared that they had lost the battle of the pensions, and the government had gained ground on minimum service...

...Although union budgets are far from transparent, it appears (from a 2006 government report) that most of the rest is covered by various state subsidies or payments provided by a large network of bilateral commissions and committees, as well as for worker education...

...The strikes went on for weeks...

...On the other hand, public support for strike action has often been far stronger than in countries in which unions are considerably stronger...

...After all, the country was shut down, and the government seemed powerless to bring an end to these strikes...

...Because of the weakness of French unions, we might imagine that strike levels would be quite low...

...In any case, it is rare these days to hear any national leader—on the right or the left—express the desire to strengthen social partners, especially unions...

...In fact, governments have been chipping away at the privileged "special" pension regimes since Jacques Chirac lost the strikes in 1995...

...The dependence of the French state on the unions has been more subtle...

...In fact strike rates are above the European Union average, although, as in most other countries, they have been declining during the past twenty-five years...

...Indeed, when public support is not strong, such as during the transport strikes in November 2007, strikes usually fail...

...CFDT leaders were close to the reorganized Socialist Party in the 1970s...

...Thus, both unions have accused one another of being politically dependent on a foreign power...

...For three days I walked several kilometers to sit with the other observers, many of whom were trade union leaders from the United States...

...In the United Kingdom, where unions were deliberately weakened during Margaret Thatcher's reign, the percent of unionization is now about 30 percent, while in Sweden, where unions are strongly institutionalized, it is still about 80 percent...

...Finally, they are remarkable because a government of the right has chosen to encourage rule changes that would strengthen the largest union confederations at a time when unions in general are weak by most measures and increasingly fragmented...

...Still, unions are sometimes dragged into strikes by movements that they have neither planned nor necessarily desired...

...In the dark morning mist, it looked like the opening of an Eisenstein film...

...The CGT grew out of the revolutionary working class movement of the late nineteenth century...

...After more than a week of strikes in November 2007, the government issued decrees that would finally bring the pension requirements of transport workers into line with those of other public service workers (by 2012...

...The parallel trends of fragmentation and decline of membership and decline DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 13 POLITICS ABROAD of militants (activists) at the shop level make it difficult to know who unions represent when they take positions or criticize the government...

...In a country where union membership has never been strong, even at its height, strikes are usually an indication of union support at a given moment, rather than the result of the breakdown of bargaining...

...In these elections, unions (as well as other organizations) have the right to present lists of candidates, and relative support for unions has often been measured by the results of these elections...

...The most important of these are the elections of plant committees (comites d'entreprise) that have taken place since the end of the Second World War...

...Forty years ago, students and striking workers almost brought down the Gaullist republic, and a little over a decade ago (in 1995), massive strikes led by the man who is now leader of the CGT (he then led the railway workers), and who signed the "common position" on April 11, drove President Jacques Chirac's prime minister, Alain Juppe, from power...

...POLITICS ABROAD Rivera could hardly contain himself as he told me how impressed he was with the power of the unions...

...It would also be difficult for unions like the General Confederation of Labor (the CGT)— the confederation that has always been close to the Communist Party—to refuse to sign agreements with which they might generally be in agreement, in order to remain free to criticize from the outside...

...They were able to gain significant wage increases for the striking workers, but more important from their point of view, they won greater institutionalized strength through the law that mandated union representatives within the factory gates...

...According to International Labor Organization statistics, rates of strike-days lost per year have declined from a normal level of three to four million in POLITICS ABROAD the 1970s to a rate of five hundred or six hundred thousand since 2000...

...Indeed, just a week before, on April 11, five union confederations, together with the three most important employer groups in the country, announced a "common position on representivity, social dialogue and the financing of the trade union movement...

...His most recent work is the forthcoming book The Politics of Immigration in France, Britain and the United States: A Comparative Analysis (Palgrave, 2008...

...Following the Second World War, the CGT came under the influence (some would argue control) of the resurgent Communist Party...

...The agreement, by requiring a minimum threshold of electoral support in certain "social elections" (for shop stewards and plant committees, for example), would give legal standing to only the largest confederations...

...It would be difficult for employers and the state to sign agreements with minority unions that are hardly representative of the larger workforce, as they have often done in the past...

...Indeed, a higher percentage of management in the private sector belongs to a professional organization or a union (7.5 percent) than do workers...

...As Le Monde reported regarding the public service strikes last November, the usual order of bargaining was observed: "After nine days of transport strikes, the reform of special pension plans is now entering its phase of concrete bargaining...

...Arguably, the trade unions were one of the few winners on the left in 1968...

...Its anticommunist minority split off to form the General Confederation of LaborWorkers' Power (CGT-FO...

...At a time when Anglo-Saxon countries are content to see unions slowly decline, the French state has continued to provide significant support for "representative" union organizations...

...Why Are Unions Effective...

...In part it is due to divisions within the working class that date from before the First World War and in part to the division of the left at the beginning of the cold war...

...So, please, subscribe now, and while you are at it, subscribe for two years: that is an even bigger help...

...It is estimated that about 8 percent to 10 percent of salaried workers are union members...

...Finally, unions and the state have had a complex, but symbiotic, relationship for most of the last century...

...Another level of union support is often measured by the results of the social elections already cited above...

...These events are also remarkable because the government appears to have made an intense effort to engage unions in direct negotiations about policymaking, and has encouraged direct national negotiations among the large union and employer confederations...

...it would also require that collective agreements on wages and working conditions be signed by these same unions in order to be valid...

...Could this be a model for unions in the United States...

...Although lists presented by union organizations have been losing ground to lists presented by other organizations claiming to represent workers, social elections seem to indicate that unions have considerable support even when workers decline to join...

...During the strike wave in Britain during the mid-1980s, public opinion shifted strongly in favor of Prime Minister Thatcher's plan to reduce the institutionalized power of the trade union movement, even among union members...

...Therefore, unions often play an important role in ending strikes, even strikes that they themselves have not initiated...

...Post Office, in good social democratic fashion, is the cheapest means of distributing magazines, we make money on subscriptions rather than bookstore or newsstand sales...

...Therefore, although, in the absence of membership, unions depend on strikes to demonstrate their mobilization capacity in normal collective bargaining, spikes of strike movements are periodic and tend to come during periods of broader social tensions...

...He is also co-editor, with Herrick Chapman and Mark Kesselman, of A Century of Organized Labor in France: A Union Movement for the Twenty-First Century (St...

...The lack of public transport and large demonstrations along the great boulevards convey the impression of a strong, determined movement that we rarely see on this side of the ocean...

...Because unions have relatively poor control over strike movements, they can never be sure whether their strike calls will be followed...

...Although there are still only five confederations recognized as "representative" at the national level (the four above and the CGC, formed at the end of the Second World War to organize white-collar workers), three new national organizations emerged in the 1990s, along with numerous other "autonomous unions...

...The CGT may collect the most money in dues, but it remains the union for which dues account for the smallest proportion of the budget (34 percent...

...As a scholar who has written about French unions, I was invited as an "international delegate...

...After writing of his desire to enhance the "social dialogue," he expressed his support for measures that would promote the organizational strength and legitimacy of the trade union movement...

...On the other hand, as many as 70 percent of workers in the public sector benefit from the presence of a union representative at their workplace, compared with 31 percent of workers in private industry...

...If the reform of recognition works the way it is supposed to, with the blessing of the president of the Republic, it will strengthen the position of the very unions that have always made life most difficult for presidents of the right (and sometimes of the left...

...The second day, I found myself sitting at the meetings next to Dennis Rivera, then president of Local 1199 (hospital workers) of the Service Employees International Union, one of the largest and most powerful unions in the United States...

...Fragmentation The fragmentation of the French trade union movement is legendary...

...With the railway workers in the lead, virtually all transport, civil service workers, and teachers in the country were on strike to protest some of the same reforms in pensions and minimum service that are now going into effect...

...The government provided some army trucks for the more adventurous, as well as water transport along the Seine...

...Moreover, public opinion is generally favorable to striking workers, even when large numbers of people are inconvenienced over a long period of time...

...A recent government report estimates that membership is about 5 percent in the private sector and perhaps 15 percent in the public sector...

...What is more surprising is that both have been dependent on the French state itself...

...At the same time that the rules of union recognition were being renegotiated, there was a continuing struggle, which included bitter strikes in November 2007, between the public service unions and the government about two issues: the maintenance of minimum service during public service strikes and the socalled "special regimes," or special pension DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 1 1 POLITICS ABROAD schemes for various public service workers...

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...At the time, Juppe had an 80 percent majority in the Na12 n DISSENT / Summer 2008 tional Assembly...

...Unions: Divided and Weak In December 1995, my wife and I arrived in Paris just as one of the largest strike movements of the decade was gaining steam...

...We can see this in two different ways...

...Martin's Press, 1998...

...Union reliance on the state has often been obscured by revolutionary vocabulary and ideological competition among the traditional confederations...

...How then, can we explain the effectiveness of unions in France...

...As Nicolas Sarkozy has recognized, they are needed, because no other actor has been able to replace them...

...The CGT, for example has often accused the CGT-FO of being the tool of American imperialism, even when the CGT itself was accepting money filtered through the Communist Party...

...Fifteen years later, the most dynamic elements of the CFTC broke away, distanced themselves from the Catholic roots of the confederation, and formed the Democratic French Confederation of Labor (the CFDT...

...Union representatives also have a right to a presence, in larger enterprises, since this was mandated by a law passed in 1968...

...Logically, the end of the cold war and the progressive collapse of the Communist Party should have facilitated the consolidation of the trade union movement...

...By contrast, a stable majority of the French public understands that the primary role of unions is to defend their members' interests, and clear majorities are in favor of unions' exerting more, rather than less, power in the workplace...

...Indeed, for years after 1968, the CGT was often referred to as the "real" opposition in the Gaullist Fifth Republic...

...Particularly in the private sector, the large number of social representatives account for many, perhaps most, of the union membership...

...The agreement was remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the ability of the union organizations to reach any agreement at all on issues that call into question their very existence...

...In fact, the French trade union movement is perhaps the weakest in Europe, certainly from the point of view of membership...

...Although this is the other side of poor control over strike movements, it often empowers the unions anyway...

...Similarly when there have been transportation strikes in large cities in the United States, most recently in 2005 in New York City, public opinion generally has been favorable to the employers (that is, the government...

...In the West, only the United States comes close to this figure with 13 percent...

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...As membership in all of the confederations dropped by two-thirds after the mid-1970s, not only did the old divisions remain, but new ones emerged, as federations and minorities broke away to form new organizations, particularly in the public sector...

...MARTIN A. SCHAIN is Professor of Politics at New York University...

...The cycle of negotiations should last a month...

...Shop stewards and plant committees are mandated in larger enterprises by legislation that was passed just before and just after the Second World War, and "representative" unions have a right to present lists for the elections to these posts...

...The first part of the explanation is that, although membership has declined for thirty years, public support for strike action is frequently very strong...

...In December, it is not light much before 9 a.m...

...On one hand, unions are—and always have been— weak by most measures...

...DISSENT / Summer 2008 n 1 5...

...In fact, his reaction was not much different from that of many Americans who have found themselves in the middle of a French public service strike...

...this is taking a long time...

...Levels of strike participation and reports of public opinion—often dubbed "social climate"—are generally seen as indices of support in a struggle between unions and the employers (or the state...

...This is particularly surprising when public service strikes disrupt the lives of large numbers of people...

...Therefore, as long as unions can claim support in public opinion during strike movements and can act as good brokers to end strikes and help the state maintain a modicum of social control, they can continue to maintain their legitimate role in the French system of labor and industrial relations...

...The historic issues of religion and communism became increasingly unimportant after 1968, but the divisions remained, and in many ways became even deeper as each confederation dug in to protect its turf...

...There is, of course, considerable variation among sectors...

...This is because the legendary French state is surprisingly vulnerable to strikes and social movements (indeed strikes on the Paris metro are frequently referred to as "social movements" in public announcements), and often seems to suffer from a "1968 complex...

...As for minimum service, the government declared victory by passing a general law in August 2007 (a socalled loi-cadre), and left it up to each public enterprise to negotiate how it would be applied...

...That is really the core of the story of the great "events" of 1968...

...Because the U.S...

...Teachers, researchers, and hospital doctors are the best organized (about 25 percent...

...The struggle over these issues has been going on since at least 1993 and was at the heart of the massive monthlong strikes in December 1995...

...It may be easier to comprehend what is happening if we understand the complicated position of unions in the maintenance of social and economic order in France...

...These kinds of subsidies are not at all new, but have become more important as income from dues and other external sources has declined...

...It was followed by the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC), which organized Catholic workers before the First World War...

...Unions and the State Finally, although in general the French state has been strong and unions weak by most measures, there has always been a symbiotic relationship between the two, one that has changed over time, but that has not been undermined by the collapse of trade union membership...

...A supportive social climate (a strong rate of participation and public support) tends to empower the bargaining power of unions, while poor participation strengthens the hand of the employers and/or the state before the bargaining process actually begins...

...In the middle of all of this, the CGT, by some measures the largest confederation, held its biennial congress in one of the near suburbs of Paris (Montreuil...