Today, France is on its 10th general strike against pension reform, calling for a move away from decrees and street clashes in favor of negotiated governance.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s disastrous pension reform is once again raising questions in French society. Why are we so rarely able to negotiate social compromises? Why are we experiencing repeated strikes and demonstrations that most of our neighbors, at least at similar rates, have rarely experienced? What can you do?
It’s a long story that goes back to the French Revolution. Contrary to what many people think, the revolution was above all a great economic and social liberal moment. One of the revolutionaries’ first tasks was to abolish the guilds that were hindering economic vitality. However, the Dallard and Le Chaprier laws adopted in 1791 also prohibited all forms of early trade unionism and contract bargaining. As Isaac Le Chaprier said, “No one is allowed to inspire the citizenry with intermediary interests in order to separate them from the public through a spirit of enterprise.” The Republic does not want to recognize an “intermediate institution” between the state and the people.
Although trade unions developed gradually in other Western countries, strikes were no longer considered a crime in France until 1864, and trade unions were formally recognized in 1884. In 1895, a federation of trade unions and labor exchanges was formed. Confederation General du Travail (CGT) However, the latter decided in 1906, with the Charter of Amiens, not to join forces with the socialists, who had only achieved unification the previous year, unlike what had happened in almost all other developed countries. This missed opportunity contributed to the persistent division and weakening of the labor movement. It delayed the institutional recognition of trade unionism.
Negotiations are very limited
Social bargaining remained very limited, and trade unionism was actively fought by public authorities, especially the government of Georges Clemenceau. During World War I, the CGT was involved in managing the wartime economy, but the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the divisions it brought weakened French trade unionism once again.
In 1936, front populaire However, this event lasted only a few months and was followed by severe repression during World War II. after that, Conseil National de la Résistance and its famous program, subsequent rebuilding and Planning General Headquarters, trade unionism was closely related. However, the Cold War soon split the unions again.
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The Fifth Republic and its Bonapartist constitution were less inclined towards social bargaining. On the contrary, in 1967 President Charles de Gaulle excluded trade unions from administering social security. Although “May ’68” ushered in new advances in labor rights, in the years that followed, the right-wingers and employers still in power struggled to maintain social control amid escalating conflict and worsening economic crisis. Did nothing to encourage negotiation.
When the Left came to power in 1981, it was characterized in all its components by nationalist and Jacobin reflexes towards social rights. He was displeased that trade unionism in France remained weak and was becoming even more fragmented with the advent of trade unions. Solidaire, INational Syndicats Autonomous Union and Fpicturedpicturedistribution syndicalUniteae.
structural contradiction
For two centuries, therefore, France has been a country where social problems are primarily resolved by law or in the streets and barricades. This has its charm and may seem romantic from a distance. However, from the point of view of economic and social efficiency, there is little doubt that the Nordic and Germanic neighbors benefited from the ability to reach social compromises more easily and regularly. Therefore, they are able to develop their society without major conflicts. This makes their economies more innovative and resilient, especially in industry, despite high labor costs.
However, France is also an exception compared to Italy and Spain due to its tendency towards structural conflicts. There, as in France, the culture of social compacts was manageable, although trade unionism was divided along ideological lines (albeit to a lesser extent).
After the strong tensions caused by the law establishing a 35-hour work week at the turn of the millennium, there was a consensus in the social field that France had too many laws and not enough contracts. Space for social negotiation needed to be expanded.
“Social Refoundation”
a Social etiquette In particular, it was supported by French Entrepreneurial Movement (Medef) with Ernest Antoine Seillier Confederation Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), then led by Nicole Notat. However, Bernard Thibault’s CGT french communist party And it was not hostile because it was looking for its place within the French institutional context.
This aspiration was widely shared across the political spectrum. The left-wing parties that were in opposition had no choice but to accede to attempts to democratize French society. But it was mainly the rightists who were at the forefront. Gerard Larchet, the current president of the Senate and then minister of labor, stipulated that before legislating on labor issues, the government would first allow the social partners to negotiate, and if an agreement was reached, it would be allowed to do so. He put his name on the 2007 law that It will become law.
In 2006, the CGT, CFDT, Medeff and the Federation of Small and Medium Enterprises agreed to reform trade union representation based on company election results. Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected president the following year, supported the movement, which increased the democratic legitimacy of the agreement and promoted social bargaining at all levels.
Return to statistics
However, this approach was often implemented retrospectively, without any real certainty. The Lurcher Act had many loopholes. The multiplicity of crises, particularly the urgency imposed by the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, provided the pretext for French technocracy to force a return to nationalism.
Above all, the reform of the trade union representation system failed to achieve its goals. This was seen as a means of uniting trade unions, particularly he CGT and CFDT, by introducing a 50 per cent criterion to test consensus between professional groups. However, the weakening of the CGT means that only the CFDT and its ‘reformist’ allies will secure this famous 50 per cent, pushing the CGT into organized opposition and consequentially reducing union fragmentation. Instead of making it worse, it made it worse. Moreover, employers no longer seek compromising social bargaining because they got almost everything they wanted from the previous presidential governments of Sarkozy, Francois Hollande and Macron.
When he first took office in 2012, President Hollande attempted to revive some of this social democratic approach. But he soon succumbed to Jacobinism and the authoritarian policies sought by Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Economy Minister Macron. They were competing to see who could be the most antisocial and most neoliberal in their economy. This spelled disaster for the entire left.
Since he began his mandate with the Labor Ordinance in 2017, Macron has openly chosen to walk the opposite path to authoritarianism and nationalism. After already inciting a revolt, gilets jaunesIt was the longest and most violent government of the entire postwar period, with a particularly unfair tax policy at the beginning of its first term, and the largest pension reform project in 30 years at the beginning of its second term. sparked a social movement. semester.
Thanks to the spirit of responsibility shown by trade unions, which once united against the project, this mass opposition movement has now taken on a non-violent form (although this has frayed at the edges). . But the government saw this as nothing more than a sign of weakness and allowed itself to show more intransigence than it faced. gilets jaunes.
perverted dynamic
Will France be able to break free from this perverse power relationship that is leading the country to the wall on a democratic, economic and social level? Obviously, this will not be easy, as long as these authoritarian practices and refusal to negotiate are deeply rooted in French history. But there’s nothing genetic or irreversible about it.
France needs to move in four directions. First, the governance of companies, which are still essentially feudal in structure, must change. It is enough to emulate the German model of co-determination, which gives employee representatives infinitely more power than in France. And this applies not only to the equal presence of employee representation on the supervisory board, but also in each establishment, where the works council has broad veto powers, from her five-person standard. .
There must also be strong pressure on trade unions to unite and even merge if we are to escape the fragmentation that has weakened French trade unionism. This means, inter alia, tightening the rules governing the validity of majority agreements, which would require raising the majority beyond 50 percent to 66.6 or 75 percent. This is considered impossible as it would mean reaching an agreement with the CGT or the CGT. Solidaire, is considered to be against any compromise. However, this is too static a view. If they have to take responsibility, they will immediately step down from their position.
The effective presence of employee representatives should become more common in small and medium-sized enterprises. In particular, this means establishing representative bodies within the network of franchisees that make up most of today’s regional trade and personal services. Indeed, it is to a large extent the abandonment of workers in these small businesses that is contributing to the decline of trade unionism, the decline of the political left and the rise of the far right.
Finally, the Lurcher Act needs to be reworked to better define the relationship between social and political democracy at the national level. This involves increased authority. Conseil pictureKonomic, society and environment We will also reform the governance of social security and take it out of the hands of the Ministry of Finance.
The difficulty, of course, is that the forces likely to advance such a project are currently very weak in a political climate polarized to the left and right between hardline authoritarian liberals and Jacobin populists. It is. However, France’s future largely depends on its ability to turn the page on authoritarianism and nationalism in the management of the social sphere. As William of Orange said, “One need not hope to try or succeed in order to endure.”
This book was originally published in French. alternative economy
Guillaume Duval is a former editor-in-chief. alternative economics.