CGT organises 49th confederal congress

In December 2009, about 1,000 delegates of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) met in Nantes in order to define the policies of their confederation. Besides paying more attention to increasing membership, especially among young people, trade union activists defined the line they intend to defend in coming national debates, such as on pensions in 2010. At the end of the congress, CGT’s General Secretary, Bernard Thibault, was re-elected for the fourth consecutive time.

Three years after its last congress in Lille (FR0607029I), the General Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT) held its 49th confederal congress in Nantes in western France from 7 to 11 December 2009. It brought together about 1,000 trade union delegates.

Circumstances leading up to congress

The context of this congress was very different for several reasons:

• the financial and economic crises, which affect all countries worldwide;

• French political elections and reforms promoted by the new President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy;

• the adoption of new rules concerning trade union representativeness and the vote obtained by CGT in the 2008 employment tribunal elections (élections prud’homales) (FR0812029I, FR0901019I), which confirmed its place as the leading French trade union with the most support.

Moreover, some CGT activists criticised several internal trade union reforms – such as changing the way in which union dues are redistributed. This led, in the autumn of 2009, to a representative of CGT’s Metalworkers’ Federation (Fédération des Travailleurs de la Métallurgie CGT, FTM-CGT) in Nord-pas-de-Calais in northern France putting himself forward as a challenger to the post of CGT confederal general secretary; however, his candidature was not admissible.

General secretary reports on past activities

Thus, in the opening session of the congress, CGT’s General Secretary, Bernard Thibault, insisted on the fact that:

the congress is the end of a long collective preparatory process, which involves taking the time to analyse the situation, taking stock and looking towards the future, by providing objectives and setting out a union approach.

He thus indicated that ‘the first undertaking of the congress should be to increase solidarity with undocumented immigrants and fight for their regularisation’ (FR0809029I). Moreover, he reviewed the different mobilisations that CGT had participated in and which ‘made it possible to implement a strategy of building a balance of forces to win industrial victories in a totally new context of systemic crisis and trade union unity’.

After this presentation and the financial report, the congress delegates adopted the report on past activities by a majority vote of 77.29% – that is, with 368,414 votes in favour out of a total 520,221 votes cast.

Focus of debate

The congress was marked by speeches by the General Secretaries of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Guy Ryder, and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), John Monks, with a call for a Euro-demonstration in March 2010.

Representing almost 655,000 members, including 117,000 retired members, CGT delegates discussed at length the policy document that sets out the confederation’s policy for:

• ‘a stronger CGT for sustainable human development, social victories and democracy’;

• ‘the increased role and responsibilities for the trade union movement and CGT’, which implies that ‘each trade union structure must ensure that it raises awareness and trains members on issues concerning young people’;

• ‘organisational forms that enable the union to recruit as many people as possible, including those in employment, retirees and unemployed people’. This explains the proposal that all union structures should reflect on, and then organise and experiment new forms of representation at local level, by creating local cross-industry union conferences.

Commentary

Although the great majority of the proposed amendments were approved, some delegates however voiced reservations, and even criticisms, pressing for more to be done to ensure that retirees, women and young people are fully represented in positions of responsibility within CGT. Two important figures of the day-to-day leadership body (bureau confederal), Maryse Dumas and Jean-Christophe Le Duigou – who, in the minds of activists, embody respectively a conflicting and a reformist line – did not stand for re-election.

Benoît Robin, Institute for Economic and Social Research (IRES)