INT’L LABOUR DAY-FRANCE: Unions Get Younger and Stronger

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, May 1 2006 (IPS) - French unions have grown into their strongest position now in decades, though you would not think that looking at the May Day demonstrations.

In Paris, less than 5,000 people joined a rally to demand better job security. Similarly modest demonstrations took place in Marseille, Rennes, Toulouse and other cities. Most unions took out their own rallies, not as a part of bigger organisations.

But unions, despite the sparse showing May Day, are riding the success of their struggles over the past two months against the ‘first job act’ (CPE, after its French name) that had to be withdrawn by President Jacques Chirac Apr. 10. The CPE would have allowed employers to fire new workers under the age of 26 at any time through a two-year-probation period.

Mass demonstrations organised jointly by unions and associations of university and high school students that drew up to three million a day forced Chirac to withdraw the plan.

“We have reasons to be very proud of the workers’ movement,” Bernard Thibault, leader of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) declared at a union congress Apr. 28 in the city of Lille, some 200 km north of Paris. “Our success in defeating the CPE was based on alliance with the youth. This alliance should continue.”

With more than 700,000 members, the CGT, traditionally close to the Communist Party, is the second largest union in France after the centrist French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT). The struggle against the CPE and other government measures that sought to reduce welfare and pension benefits have helped the CGT regain some of the influence that it had enjoyed during the 1950s and 1960s, and that it then lost to the more moderate CFDT.

The triumph against the CPE “opens real opportunity to shape the social struggles to come,” Thibault told IPS. “Now the social movement, the French workers, and students organisations have gathered momentum, have gathered confidence that we can influence the debates on our social system. The government and the employers should be aware of our new strength.”

Some of the main leaders of the students’ movement against the CPE joined the congress in Lille. Thibault said the students’ participation in the congress showed a maturity in their understanding of the social challenges ahead.

“One cliché about French youth is that they are not interested in politics,” Thibault said. “The truth is, most young men and women are perfectly aware that we all face enormous social challenges, and they do not want to accept the position of the employers and government that they will have to accept a lower standard of living than the present generation of workers.”

For French unions, opening up to youth is essential for survival. CGT members’ average age is above 40. Most members work either for state-owned enterprises, or have a long-term job contract with a large private corporation. But only eight percent of French workers are members of a union.

The recent struggles have also encouraged students to see unions in a new light. “I was fed up with this feeling that we must always accept the decisions taken by employers and government,” Bastien, a 25-year-old engineering student and part-time worker at a car factory told IPS. “And then came the fight against the CPE.”

That the coalition’s success against the CPE did not lead to large May Day demonstrations is not necessarily worrying, Thibault said. Unions are now gathering to fight new hiring contract regulations, he said. Under these proposal anyone can be fired within the first two years of a job irrespective of age and without necessarily being given justification.

“The CNE (the new proposal) is our next objective,” Thibault said. “We are discussing with other unions ways of forcing the government to abolish this law. To begin with, we are counselling workers who have been fired without warning and without reason to institute legal complaints against their employers.”