Abstract
The local union must influence — and in turn is influenced by — not only its working-class constituency and other unions, but also a third group: management. This group is clearly the most important target of the union, in that unless the union can extract (or be widely perceived as extracting) sufficient benefits from management, workers will view the union as ineffective. Lack of worker support for a given union implies, in turn, weakness of that union in competing (or co-operating) with other unions. Extracting benefits from management is no easy matter, however, given the state of ideological warfare that has traditionally existed between labour and management.
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Notes and References
See Michael Shalev, ‘Strikes and the Crisis: Industrial Conflict and Unemployment in the Western Nations’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, 4 (1983) p. 440.
The phrase is from Alain Bergounioux, Force Ouvrière (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982) p. 72.
One writer views this shift in management strategy as a conscious effort ‘to reconquer a greater margin of maneuver in the management of enterprises’, following a period (late 1960s through the mid-1970s) during which employers felt ‘limited, constrained, hemmed in — by social regulation, union action, price controls, limitations on credit.’ see Pierre Rosenvallon, ‘Le syndicalisme en tournant’, Projet, 129 (Nov 1978) p. 1034.
The following discussion is based largely on Bernard Soulage, Stratégies Industrielles et Sociales des Groupes français (Grenoble: Université des sciences sociales/Institute de Recherche Economique et de Planification, 1982) pp. 549–58.
See Pierre Belleville, Une Nouvelle Classe ouvriére (Paris: René Julliard, 1963) pp. 179–83.
Determination of the CE’s revenues is made through a complex formula based on the firm’s total payroll. All CE revenues are provided by the employer. For an explanation of CE finances, see Jean-Pierre Duprilot and Paul Fieschi-Vivet, Les Comités d’entreprise (Droit et Pratique) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1982) pp. 101–4.
This opinion nicely reflects a similar observation made by Christian Morel in his excellent study, La Grève froide: Stratégies syndicales et Pouvoir patronal (Paris: Editions d’Organisation, 1981). Morel, however, stresses a different explanation: that the ‘parliamentary’ quality of these meetings stems more from the unions’ attempts to compensate for their relative weakness, rather than from management recalcitrance. Unions, he argues, practise a‘strategy of deafness’ in which the goal is ‘less to bargain than to exert pressure’. (p. 65). For unions, meetings with management are, therefore, ‘a demonstration, an assembly debate, a verbal combat’ (p. 64).
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© 1987 W. Rand Smith
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Smith, W.R. (1987). The Local Union and Management: Between Accommodation and Revolt. In: Crisis in the French Labour Movement. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08556-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08556-9_7
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