In membership terms the French trade union movement is one of the weakest in Europe with only 8% of employees in unions. It is divided into a number of rival confederations, competing for membership. (The main confederations are the
In membership terms the French trade union movement is one of the weakest in Europe with only 8% of employees in unions. It is divided into a number of rival confederations, competing for membership. (The main confederations are the CGT, CFDT, FO, CFTC and CFE-CGC.) But despite low membership and apparent division French trade unions have strong support in elections for employee representatives and are able to mobilise French workers to great effect.
Official figures from the national household survey show that there are some 1.8 million trade unionists in employment in France. This means that 8.1% of all employees in France are in unions – the figures are an average for the period 2001 to 2005. 1 In addition the unions have a number of unemployed and retired members, adding another 400,000 to this total.2 The ICTWSS database of union membership estimates union density at 7.9% in 2010.3
Historically, there have been five main union confederations with membership across the whole of the economy. They are the CGT, CFDT, CGT-FO (better known as FO), the CFTC and the CFE-CGC which primarily represents professional and managerial employees. For many years, these five were all considered "representative" at national level, without being required to demonstrate a specific level of support. This nationally “representative” status automatically gave them rights to negotiate or to nominate candidates for elections (for the CFE-CGC this just applied in respect of professional and managerial staff). There were also other union groupings, such as the FSU, UNSA and Solidaires. They have significant influence, but they did not have the legal status of the five “representative” confederations, although in specific cases they were able ask a court to accord them “representative” status.
However, this situation, which after 1966 remained unaltered for more than 40 years 1966, has now changed. Legislation passed in August 2008 introduced new criteria for determining whether a union is representative at national, industry and company level. For the first time, these include the requirement to have at least a set level of support from employees in workplace elections – either as indicated by the votes for the members of the works council or, in smaller companies for the employee delegates (see section on workplace representation). Additionally, in companies with 10 employers or fewer, where these structures do not exist, workers are able to vote for the unions they favour in regional elections every four years, and there are separate elections for the small number of employees in agriculture.
The new law requires a union to win at least 10% of the votes at company level to be considered representative at company level, 8% of the votes at industry level to be considered representative at industry level and 8% of the votes at national level, to be considered representative at national level. However, the votes to be used as the basis of these calculations are the votes in the first round of the elections, when only unions can nominate candidates. Only if less than half those eligible fail to vote for the union nominated candidates is there a second round in which non-union candidates can also stand.
The results of the first test of the representativeness of unions under these rules were announced on 29 March 2013, and all five of the existing nationally representative union confederations cleared the 8% hurdle. The CGT came top of the poll with 26.77% of the votes, followed by the CFDT with 26.00%. FO was in third place with 15.94% and the CFE-CGC got 9.43%. The CFTC was in fifth place with 9.30%, but this was still sufficient to be declared nationally representative.
The newer confederations, UNSA, with 4.26% and Solidaires with 3.47% failed to get the necessary 8% at national level, although they did achieve it in a number of industries, giving them rights to participate in negotiations at this level where they did so.
Until 2017, when the next round of results are announced, confederations that are nationally representative are automatically deemed representative at industry level irrespective of their level of support within the industry concerned. However, from 2017 onwards they will have gain 8% of the votes within an industry to be considered representative in negotiations within it.
At company level, the new representativeness threshold is already in force where elections have been held under the new rules, and some of the nationally representative unions have lost their rights. For example, the works council elections at the French railway company SNCF in March 2009, resulted in the FO, CFE-CGC and CFTC losing their rights as representative unions at company level, as they gained fewer than 10% of the votes.
There is considerable rivalry between the main confederations, but the reasons for the differences are not always clear and there can also be a gap between the political positions put forward by the leadership and those supported by the membership.
Among the three largest confederations, the CGT has generally taken the most militant positions on political and industrial issues, although it does not oppose ev