Results of workplace elections in state education sector

Download article in original language : FR0601106FFR.DOC

In December 2005, teaching staff in French state primary and secondary schools elected their representatives on various national and local consultative bodies. The Unitary Union Federation (FSU) remained the best supported trade union overall, with nearly 47% of the vote. Turn-out fell to 61.4% from 65.9% in the previous elections in 2002

Workplace elections among teaching staff in the state education system took place in primary schools, collèges (11-15 year-olds) and lycées (15-18 year-olds) on 6 December 2005. Every three years, teachers elect staff representatives on joint administrative committees (commissions administratives paritaires, CAPs) and the elections are used by the Ministry of Education to measure the degree of representativeness of the sector’s trade unions.

Joint structures

CAPs are responsible for overseeing issues such as the individual careers of the staff, postings, promotions and discipline.

For each category of teachers there are two tiers of joint administrative committees. At national level, each of the nine categories has a national joint administrative committee (commission administrative paritaire nationale, CAPN), on which sit 73 'commissioners' and one or two deputies for each commissioner. At local level, there are 230 academic joint administrative committees (commissions administratives paritaires académiques, CAPAs) for secondary school teachers and 90 département-level joint administrative committees (commissions administratives paritaires départementales, CAPDs) for primary school staff.

On the basis of the results of the elections to the CAPs for all teaching and non-teaching staff, the number of representatives for each union on technical joint committees (comités techniques paritaires, CTPs) is calculated. There are département-level CTPs (CTPDs), academic CTPs (CTPAs) and ministerial-level CTPs (CTPMs) . The CTPs are responsible for everything that does not relate to individual careers, particular the creation or elimination of tenured positions in individual primary and secondary schools. The unions without the required level of electoral support (ie those that do not reach the thresholds laid down by the Ministry) are not represented on the CTPs. None of these bodies has more than a consultative function.

There are other levels of consultative machinery in state education:

• the High Council on Education (Conseil supérieur de l’Education, CSE) in which all the actors involved in the education system are represented on a non-elected basis;

• the High Council for the State Civil Service (Conseil supérieur de la Fonction publique de l’Etat, CSFPE) in which representation is 'mixed', with elected representatives from organisations representing state education staff on one hand and, on the other, representatives appointed by all the unions with representative status (as set out in a 1966 decree); and

• the High Council for the Civil Service (Conseil supérieur de la Fonction publique, CSFP), within whose purview fall the three branches of the public service - ie the state (including the Ministry of Education, which accounts for more than one third of central government civil servants), local authorities’ permanent staff, and the hospital service.

Unions may be considered to have representative status in one of these structures but not the others.

Election results

The December 2005 workplace elections were expected to reflect the effects of teaching staff's very vehement response to the 2003 reform of civil servants’ pensions (FR0309103F) and the organised opposition to a school system reform plan in 2004 (FR0406103N).

The potential electorate in the poll stood at almost 800,000 teaching staff, or around a fifth of all French civil servants. Overall, more than 2,700 people were elected as employee representatives.

The turn-out fell noticeably to 61.4% from 65.9% in 2002 ( FR0303101N). This decline was stronger at the primary school level, where turn-out has fallen by 10 percentage points since 1999. The overall ranking of support for the 11 unions presenting slates was not altered from the 2002 results, with FSU again receiving the most votes - see the table below.