TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION
| FRANCE |
| CONFÉDÉRATION TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION |
National trade union body, in most cases multi-industry, serving as an umbrella organization for individual national trade unions, area unions at département and regional level, and occupational or industrial federations.
Five such confederations have been recognized as representative (see representativeness ) at national level, and they have a major role to play. Not only do they ensure that labour interests are protected, but they also regulate the functioning of the confederated organizations attached to them. And they participate in the formulation of the rules of labour and social security law. In practice, a considerable amount of power is concentrated in their hands.
The five confederations possessing representative status are as follows:
CFDT : Confédération française démocratique du travail (French Democratic Confederation of Labour). This trade union confederation is a continuation of the French Christian Workers' Confederation, which changed its name in 1964 in order to mark the wish of the majority of its members to eliminate any religious connotation.
Purely in terms of the results of workplace-level elections , i.e. the votes won by the candidates standing in its name, it occupies second place among the confederations.
CFTC : Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (French Christian Workers' Confederation). Trade union confederation originally formed in 1919, whose name has been preserved by the minority of its members who were opposed to the elimination of the religious connotation which took place in 1964 (see CFDT , French Democratic Confederation of Labour, above) and broke away in order to maintain its traditional image.
CGC-CFE : Confédération générale des cadres-Confédération française de l'encadrement (General Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff-French Confederation of Professional and Managerial Staff). Trade union confederation which was originally formed in 1946 and then known simply as the CGC. It is the only one of the five confederations possessing recognized representative status at national level which is intended for a single occupational category. The other four do, however, have professional and managerial employees among their members. Consequently, the CGC-CFE does not possess monopoly representation of this category, whose definition is in any case uncertain (see professional or managerial employee ).
CGT : Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour). As the oldest of the five representative trade union confederations, this confederation was created in two stages, in 1895 and 1906. It has left its mark on the entire labour movement and still occupies first place among the confederations in terms of the number of votes won in workplace-level elections and, undoubtedly, the number of its members, although it has lost the pre-eminent position it occupied until as recently as 30 years ago. The links between some of its senior officials (and in particular its General Secretary) and the Communist Party have frequently been the subject of much emphasis and comment. But it has to be remembered that the transformation of society is one of the objectives of the French trade union movement as it exists today.
CGT-FO : Confédération générale du travail-Force ouvrière (General Confederation of Labour-"Force ouvrière"). This trade union confederation (also known simply as FO), was formed in 1947 in the climate of the start of the "cold war", by some of the CGT's officials and member unions. It was therefore born in the name of "trade union independence", which, in the early years, mainly signified hostility towards the CGT because of its links with the Communist Party, and nowadays embodies the total rejection of all ties with political parties, the active promotion of collective bargaining (particularly at multi-industry and industry level) and a certain reluctance towards any form of integration within the enterprise. The confederation, whose member unions embrace widely diverse ideological persuasions, claims to be the true heir of a trade unionism whose heritage is free and unfettered collective bargaining.
Please note: the European industrial relations glossaries were compiled between 1991 and 2003 and are not updated. For current material see the European industrial relations dictionary.