Negotiations on the reduction of working time started at Michelin, the French tyre-manufacturing group, in early 2000. These talks have set management against trade unions, and have also pitted the unions against each other. In early 2001, employees and unions were split over a plan to consult the workforce on a draft agreement reached by management and the CFDT union. The CGT union sought a court ruling to prevent the consultation, but in February the court ruled that it could be held on 29 March 2001.
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Negotiations on the reduction of working time started at Michelin, the French tyre-manufacturing group, in early 2000. These talks have set management against trade unions, and have also pitted the unions against each other. In early 2001, employees and unions were split over a plan to consult the workforce on a draft agreement reached by management and the CFDT union. The CGT union sought a court ruling to prevent the consultation, but in February the court ruled that it could be held on 29 March 2001.
Negotiations on the reduction of working time and the introduction of the 35-hour week (in line with the recent legislation on this issue - FR0001137F) began at Michelin, the tyre manufacturer, in January 2000 and continued throughout the year.
On 8- 9 November 2000, in an action called by the CFDT, CFTC, CGT and CGT-FO trade unions, the employees of the Michelin group's various French sites demonstrated their overwhelming opposition to the working time reduction proposal put forward by management. The plan envisaged, among other items, a 10-14 day reduction of annual working time for most employees and the recruitment of 1,000 people, in exchange for longer factory operating hours, including more Saturday working. CGT demanded 34 days' reduction of working time for shiftworkers and 24 for non-shiftworkers, while CFDT asked for 22 and 19 days' reduction, and CGT-FO for 22 and 17 days respectively.
Having provoked such a negative response, management first considered strictly implementing the legislative provisions on working time reduction which apply in the event of failure to reach a negotiated agreement. However, it then negotiated a draft agreement with CFDT. This provided for: up to 15 days' annual reduction of working time, without a pay cut; increasing wages in line with inflation through 2002 and 2003; and the recruitment of 1,000 people on open-ended contracts in the 18 months subsequent to the signing of the agreement. CGT and CGT-FO deemed these improvements insufficient.
The local CFDT negotiator was disowned by his union section. CFDT's chemicals and energy federation, to which the Michelin CFDT sections belong, took the initiative of requesting that the employees be consulted to validate the agreement, in compliance with the provisions of the 35-hour week legislation (FR0001137F). The planned direct consultation of employees, which circumvents the opposition of the majority unions at Michelin, raises the currently topical issue of the unions' representative status in a very concrete manner (FR9909104F).
The CFDT Michelin section in Clermont-Ferrand, the group's traditional headquarters, strongly criticised this initiative, which it maintained had been taken despite grassroots opposition. Some CFDT members left the union and set up a new union, SUD-Michelin.
CGT, the majority union at Michelin, and CGT-FO are at loggerheads over the form that the planned consultation should take, with CGT filing several legal motions for annulment. On 19 January 2001, the Clermont-Ferrand magistrate's court (tribunal d'instance) first decided to postpone the consultation initially planned for 25 January. After a legal battle lasting several weeks, the same court finally ruled on 26 February that the consultation of the group's 27,000 employees would take place on 29 March 2001.
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Eurofound (2001), Difficult 35-hour week negotiations at Michelin, article.
