Trade Unions and Politics

Abstract

For a long time, French trade unionism constituted a clear illustration of what has been dubbed the “French exception.” This is no longer the case. The fact remains that the actions of French trade unions seem paradoxical to many foreign observers. In today’s Europe French trade unions are unique. They retain the ability to mobilize large-scale protests movements and regularly force the cancellation of government reform packages. Most trade union movements in the European Union no longer have this kind of power to mobilize, or if they do, they choose not to exercise it. In the last decade or so there have been numerous instances of the French trade union movement demonstrating its capacity for mobilization—including street demonstrations and strikes—from the December 1995 movement to more recent conflicts over pensions and employment contracts for young workers.¹ French unions’ ability to organize large scale mass protest, demonstrations and strikes has created the impression that the French trade union movement wields more power than unions elsewhere. In fact, the French trade unions are weak, certainly much weaker than many of their European counterparts. How can this paradox be explained? It seems that the ability to mobilize, engage in conflict and protest can be reconciled with a greatly weakened trade union movement. Indeed, these two phenomena might actually reinforce each other. In fact the weakness of the French trade union movement is due to its internal divisions, deep divisions which have their roots in the history of the workers movement and which, at least for the moment, show no signs of healing.