Magazine / Current / France / Article | 01/08/2008

A social relations system in a dilemma

Strike, demonstration and revolution are three features of French society. Are they still true, or are they run-down clichés? Stéphane Sirot says: The insurrectional potential of French society became a dummy.

At the beginning of the XXIst century, France offers the image of a country whose social relations are based on a triple characteristic: frequently resorting to strikes; weak but willingly disputatious unions; State interventionism. It is true that historically, the peculiarity of this country's social relations has a central position ascribed to the practice of striking. However, today this original system appears to have broken down. The unions are experiencing an almost unprecedented crisis of legitimacy and are labouring to loosen the iron collar of planning imposed by the State apparatus on the defective functioning of social democracy.

Photo: Vasili Varvaki (iStock)

The breathlessness of the regulation of conflicts in social relations

The most recent research, carried out by Stéphane Sirot or by Guy Groux and Jean-Marie Pernot showed: in the XIXth and XXth centuries, relations between employers and employees were built according to a method of settling conflicts in social relations. Striking takes a central position, in a double sense: it makes it possible to measure the strengths of the adversaries present, but these also urge finding a solution, a compromise.
This particular operating method has rapidly distanced our country from its neighbours. Since the end of the XIXth century, Germany, Belgium or England have been oriented towards a model in which negotiating a claim preceded any confrontation. In France, on the other hand, attempts at peaceful resolution of disputes failed. On the contrary, striking became the regulator of social relations and in 1946, ranked as constitutional law.

This system started to be deregulated with the effect of the economic crisis. The number of individual days' strikes, on average more than three million during the seventies, was halved, from the first half of the decade beginning in 1980. The trend has continued. The latest detailed statistics from the ministry of employment, those of 2005, record 224 000 individual days not worked in order to hold a strike in the private transport sector. It is necessary to go back to the XIXth century to find such a small figure! There is hardly anything but the public sector that manages to mobilise, but on purely defensive demands.
Contrary to the received ideas, France was not the European country of strikes. The crossing of the various analyses carried out over the years 1970-2004 is clear. In terms of number of days' strikes per 1 000 employees, the French average is generally lower than the European average. Not counting the special case of Eastern Europe, only Benelux and Germany are able to pride themselves more than France on escaping the phenomenon of strikes.

For some years, the political context has been reinforcing this reduction in strikes. Indeed, governments of the right show themselves to be inflexible when faced with the officials' demands. In 2003, the bitter failure of their ample movement for the defence of pensions contributed to the weakening of mobilisation of State employees. Let us add that in 2007, a law setting up minimum service in transport imposed a coercive restriction on employment disputes in one of the sectors among the most verbose in this area. It was even planned to impose a guaranteed service on new public services, like national Education.
The 24-hour action days with repetition and without organised tangible results in 2007-2008 mobilise increasingly fewer people. This situation is encouraging the etiolation of a crumbled and insufficiently representative union movement.

Poor union representation

The French union movement is experiencing a paradoxical situation: it is more fragmented than it has ever been, at the very time when it has almost never brought together so few employees.

There are no more than five historical confederations (CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail = General Employment Confederation), CFTC (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens = French Confederation of Christian Workers), CFE-CGC (Confédération française de l'encadrement- Confédération générale des cadres = French Management Confederation-General Confederation of Managers), ( FO (Force ouvrière = Work Force), CFDT (= Confédération française démocratique du travail = French Democratic Employment Confederation), to which are added three more recent trade unions (Union syndicale Solidaires (= Solidarity Trade Union), UNSA (Union Nationale des Syndicats Autonomes = National Union of Independent Trade Unions), FSU (Fédération syndicale unitaire = Unitary Trade Union Federation). All of this, not including the multitude of independent categorial formations. This dispersion is the source of divisions, a « war of everyone against everyone ». This complicates the matter of working out joint steps, be these offers or an objections. This plays in favour of power: it may reckon on division in order better to prevail.

As regards the employees, they find it difficult to be in such a labyrinth of organisations. As the opinion polls show, they reproach the trade unions for their inability to unite. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons put forward to explain the extremely small union membership in France. The most recent studies establish the rate of trade union membership at between 7 and 8 %, with about 5 % in the private and 15 % in the public sector. This is the smallest in all of the developed countries. No sector escapes this haemorrhage. It is necessary to go back to before the First World War to observe lower figures!

Because of this, the trade unions lack legitimacy. Incapable of attracting members, they are opting henceforth for choosing the main criterion for assessing their representativity. In April 2008, this situation ended in the MEDEF (Mouvement des entreprises de France = French Businesses Movement), the CGT and the CFDT signing a « joint position » reforming the representativity of the trade unions. This gave rise to drafting of a bill on « social democracy and working time », which was debated by Parliament in July. This bill makes the election the privileged measurement of representativity. In order to be considered as such, a trade union must obtain at least 10 % of the « validly expressed votes » in the professional elections in the company, at least 8 % at branch level and at national level. Presented as progress in social democracy, this reform conceals undeniable weaknesses and dangers. First of all, with the instrument of measurement used, the professional elections (staff delegates and delegates of the joint consultative committee), excluding establishments with less than 11 employees, which nevertheless gather together more than a third of the assets of the private sector! Then, pluralism of candidature guaranteed by the election institutionalises the fragmentation of the trade unions, just one of their main weaknesses. Finally, they must avoid two dangers: that of engaging in logic liable to transform them into « electoral offices » (electoral alliances of circumstance, growing preoccupation with image to the detriment of actual activity…); that of relaxing recruitment efforts, even to the extent that the electors could take precedence over the members, the number of which is no longer so much of an essential criterion. However that might be, this law will not resolve the deficit in historical social democracy in France.

Deficient social democracy under the eye of the State

The French revolution of 1789 laid the foundations of political democracy in France, but it stifled social democracy, leaving little room for opposing powers. Of course, progress has been made since. But the political leaders have always resisted giving employees' representatives too much authority. This was the case in particular after the Second World War and during the « Thirty Glorious Years ». So it has always been denied – both in 1945 at the time when the joint consultative committees were set up or in 1968 with the law authorising the companies' trade union section – the possibility of being associated with the way companies were led or their strategic choices.

A logic of power relationships was installed, often setting up an atmosphere of suspicion between the social partners, monitored by a political force that was jealous of its prerogatives. It was often this that decided or took the initiative. The government and Parliament produced the main points of French social law. This interventionism in the political field distinguishes France from its European partners and constitutes one of the great limitations of social democracy.

The law on « modernisation of the social dialogue » promulgated on 31 January 2007 certainly proclaims that executive power undertakes to consult, and favour consultation. But it must formulate solutions and impose deadlines. As stipulated in this text, the government presents « diagnostic elements, the objectives pursued and the main options ». Finally, the social partners express themselves on choices that have largely already been made! Sarkozy flagrantly illustrates this reality, and the beginnings of the five-year period. The reforms to the minimum services, pensions or working time were carried out without proper consultation: each time the final pension, and the final aim was fixed before the negotiations opened and it was stated that they were not to be amended;. The prerogatives of the social partners were essentially limited to recommending marginal arrangements. The schedule of reforms is in addition to constraint and the reduced discussion periods are fixed by the State.

Convinced of the inability of the trade unions to mobilise the employees, carried by the successes of the neo-liberal speeches and by individualisation tinged with resignation on the part of French society, the President of the Republic and the government neglect or instrumentalise the trade union organisations and social dialogue. They neglect them and change to force if they note the reticence of the employees' representatives facing the demands. They use them as relay stations, as soon as they obtain their assent on the main points. This strategy, which for the moment is relatively fruitful, does not however later exclude the bursting forth of a broad social movement which, at regular intervals, shakes French society.

Trade unions at a moribund pace, strikes that are no longer accepted, the fear of the independence of the social partners and the mistrust of the State apparatus of intermediary bodies, such are the major features of the French social landscape. This complicates the development of a properly accepted social democracy. It is still one of the conditions of the trade unions' contribution to change. In order to make it possible for them to get out of a defensive position, facing the reforms, it is indispensable to fully include them in the mechanisms of preparing them, without denying them the right to oppose this. The way the European Union works will perhaps open a way out for French trade unionism. The Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) granted the social partners the right to negotiate before any political decision is made, but also to conclude a collective agreement, then used in the Member States. Finally, a France with wobbly social democracy is more of a paradox than ever in Europe.

Further articles on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Social Policy / Employment, » History, » France
More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Social Policy / Employment, » History, » France