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The Changing Relations between Trade Unions and Working-Class Parties in France

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1978

Georges Lavau
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Extract

The intellectual structures which can easily be applied to the political and social realities of Northern Europe are largely irrelevant to those of Southern Europe, and certainly, to those of France.

Three postulates are implicit in considering the problem of the changing relations between the trade unions and the working-class parties.

One is that in every European industrial country there are working-class parties. In addition there are parties which are not working class, but bourgeois middle class, conservateurs, popolare or volksparteien (and the logic of this postulate even implies that there is, in fact, only one working-class party of any real political significance).

Type
Research Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 437 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1978

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References

1 The membership of the CGT is estimated at around 3 million workers (who are not all regular subscribers); that of the CFDT is about 1 million (about 800,000 regular subscribers); and that of the FEN around 500,000; the membership of the CGT-FO is much more mysterious (400,000).

The CGT is implanted in all industrial sectors, in all public administrations, in all regions, and it is usually the trade union which has the strongest support in these areas. It occupies, for example, a position of overwhelming supremacy in the metal industry and the railroads.

On the average, in professional elections, the CGT always receives more than 50% of the votes, while the CFDT obtains slightly more than 20% and the CGT-FO about 15%.

2 The situation can be characterized in the following manner: a worker or an employee generally belongs to the CGT not because the CGT expresses certain opinions or because it appears to be the most pugnacious of the trade unions, but for the simple reason that it is normally the trade union which is the most visible (and sometimes the only one which is truly visible). On the contrary, except for a few very rare exceptions, the worker or the employee who belongs to the CFDT or the CGT-FO is someone who wants to belong to a union, but who, for moral or political reasons, does not want to belong to the CGT which he accuses of being a transmission belt of the Communist Party.

3 Between 1944 and 1953, there was a close relationship (although never forma lized) between the Confédération des Travailleurs Chrétiens (the common ancestor of the present-day CFDT and CFTC) and the MRP. Relations between these two became more and more stormy, until they were definitively broken in 1964.

4 The leadership of the FEN, since its creation in 1948, has always been controlled by an organized faction favourable to the Socialist Party. The CGT-FO had a propensity for the SFIO until 1971, but it has a very distrustful relationship with the present-day Socialist Party.

5 That is what the CGT did in 1964-O5 when the Socialist G. Defferre tried to create a centre-left coalition leaving out the PCF.

6 In 1975, the PCF publicized a report of Georges Marchais to the Central Committee of 29 May 1972 which contained many criticisms of the PS; but the PCF had kept the report secret for three years, during which an apparent euphoria reigned.

7 See Georges Lavau, ‘Les voies du PCF’, Etudes, March 1977.

8 Notably at the Renault factories and in many others. See Georges Lavau, op. cit.

9 Originally a technician with a Catholic background, J.-L. Moynot, was already an important full-time official of the CGT when he joined the PCF a few years ago.

10 The CFTC had a close relationship with the MRP from 1944 to 1953 and this period left unhappy memories. Between 1955 and 1958 certain leaders of the CFTC were envious of the ties uniting the British trade unions and the Labour Party.

11 Introductory exposé by Edmond Maire before the Conseil National, April 1975 (Syndicalisme, 29 May 1975, p. 9, E. Maire’s italics).

12 Edmond Maire honestly recognized this in his report to the Conseil National, 24—26 April 1975 (Syndicalisme, 29 May 1975).

13 Conseil National, 24-26 January 1974 (my italics).

14 For about the last four years, some militants of the CFDT have also belonged to the PCF. These memberships are beginning to become numerous enough to disturb the CFDT.

15 Press release, 15 November 1977.