Abstract
As the preceding chapter revealed, the two most powerful unions, the CGT and CFDT, often co-operate during the course of strikes, forming joint strike committees, setting common demands and bargaining together with management. On the other hand, these two unions are much less likely to form working coalitions with the ‘moderate’ unions — FO, CTFC, and CGC.1 There are several practical reasons for CGT-CFDT co-operation. First, as these militants admit, and other research demonstrates, ‘unity of action’ (unité d’action) between the CGT and CFDT enhances their effectiveness. Individually, the two unions possess limited capacity to mobilise workers and confront management from a position of strength. Together, however, they are much better able to attract worker support, control strike action, and wrest concessions from management.2 The CGT and CFDT, moreover, often co-operate because workers demand it. Militants of both unions assert that workers complain about union division, constantly asking them, ‘Why don’t you guys get together?’ Finally these unions co-operate frequently out of their common ideological opposition to capitalism.
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Notes and References
Quoted in Gérard Adam, La CFTC, 1940–1958 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1964) p. 161.
George Ross, ‘Party and Mass Organization: The Changing Relationship of PCF and CGT’, in Donald L. M. Blackmer and Sydney Tarrow (eds) Communism in Italy and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) p. 510.
George Ross, Workers and Communists in France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982) pp. 64–5.
Gérard Adam, ‘L’Unité d’Action CGT-CFDT’, Revue française de Science politique, 17:3 (June 1967) p. 577.
Guy Caire, Les Syndicats ouvriers (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971) p. 108.
Also see George Lichtheim’s discussion of the rapprochement between ‘Marxist’ and ‘Christian Socialist’ labour in Marxism in Modern France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966) pp. 102–11.
This theme was initially developed in 1959 by Gilbert Declerq, a leader of the reformist Reconstruction minority. See his report, ‘Pour une planification démocratique’, in La CFDT (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971) pp. 64–96.
See also Jean-Pierre Oppenheim, La CFDT et la Planification (Paris: Tema-éditions, 1973).
A descriptively useful, though overly polemical, version of the Leninist model is provided in Claude Harmel, La Confédération Générale du Travail, 1947–1981 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982), esp. pp. 16–29.
Edmond Maire, in statement to Conseil National, April 1978; quoted in George Lavau, ‘The Changing Relations between Trade Unions and Working-Class Parties in France’, Government and Opposition, 13:4 (1978) p. 456.
Henri Krasucki, Syndicats et Unité (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1980) p. 55.
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© 1987 W. Rand Smith
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Smith, W.R. (1987). CGT-CFDT Relations: ‘Conflictual Unity’?. In: Crisis in the French Labour Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08556-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08556-9_6
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