Abstract
In his last New Year’s message to the nation, President Mitterrand called for a ‘new social contract’ to combat unemployment: rather late in the day, one might think, and something of an acknowledgement of the failure of the Mitterrand presidency to create the conditions for meaningful social dialogue in a country so proud of its ‘social model’. Industrial relations reform is not conspicuously one of the great successes of the Mitterrand era, and it did not take long after the arrival of the first Socialist government for the strained relations between state, employers and trade to become evident. It could even be argued that the French industrial relations system has been destabilized by the policies and economic trends of the Mitterrand era, with no alternative structures to replace it. Trade unions, already in 1981 weaker than many of their European counterparts, have been further marginalized in the Mitterrand years: from over 25 per cent in 1981, trade union membership has fallen to only seven per cent of the workforce today (and a tiny five per cent in the private sector):’1 hardly a sign of healthy industrial relations.
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Notes
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© 1998 M. Maclean
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Milner, S. (1998). Industrial Relations in France: Towards a New Social Pact?. In: Maclean, M. (eds) The Mitterrand Years. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26395-0_10
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