PARIS—At first glance, France’s trade unions have never been better. Their campaign against President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age has drawn hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets, and labor leaders are fixtures on the most popular TV channels. Almost half of the French think trade unions rather than any political party embody the real opposition to Macron, and the overwhelming majority think the damaging strikes against his pension reform are justified.
But under this patina of success, French unions are wheezing. Membership numbers are down sharply, and many labor leaders feel their organizations have failed to stem the neoliberal wave that has been eroding workers’ rights for decades—and has only accelerated under Macron. Since he took power in 2017, Macron—a former investment banker who campaigned on a centrist, pro-business platform—has loosened the rules for firing employees, capped compensations for illegal layoffs, and favored agreements between management and workers at the company-level rather than for entire sectors, which critics say undermines employees’ bargaining power.
“The unions’ strategy over the past decades has not yielded any major victories on a national level,” said Olivier Mateu, head of the General Confederation of Labor (CGT)’s Bouches-du-Rhône section in southern France.
Unions, particularly the fiery CGT, have tried to put up a fight. But their leaders have been criticized for a lack of unity and determination as well as for thinking they could get Macron to change course by sitting at the negotiating table rather than taking to the picket line.
“Macron really took them for a ride,” said Jean-Bernard Gervais, a former communications advisor at CGT and the author of a scathing book about the union’s inner workings.
It’s been a long fall from glory for what was one of Europe’s most powerful labor movements. In 1936, the country’s first successful general strike led to paid leave, shorter working hours, and higher salaries. Workers’ rights were further expanded by means of tough strike actions in the years following World War II, when unions could count on millions of members. In the 1960s and for most of the 1970s, unionization rates were still hovering well above 20 percent. In May 1968, mass walkouts by an unprecedented 10 million workers yielded major concessions, such as a big increase in the minimum wage and a larger role for union representatives in the workplace.
Since the late 1970s, however, with the eruption of neoliberal economic policies in the Western world, French unions have been in a steady decline. The French working class, with its purchasing power dwindling and employment conditions worsening, seems increasingly disillusioned about the mechanisms in place to defend its rights. The share of unionized workers has fallen to barely 7 percent. Elections held last December to select union representatives in the public sector saw the lowest turnout on record, and the share of people who have confidence in trade unions has shrunk to barely 36 percent.
France is not alone. Unions have lost one-quarter of their members since 1980 in the United States, and 47 percent in Germany. Even British unions, which can count on strong ties with the mainstream Labour Party and are currently involved in unprecedented walkouts by health service staff over pay, have hemorrhaged almost half of their affiliates.
Part of the malaise has roots common to most of the developed world. Manufacturing, which traditionally was heavily unionized, has been hollowed out in much of the West. But with their membership tanking at a faster pace than in most wealthy countries, French unions have problems of their own. More than elsewhere, French workers’ organizations are heavily reliant on a variety of public handouts, which means they are less dependent on large numbers of paying members. This, in turn, has led to the rise of an apparatus of full-time union employees that has little accountability to (and is often distrusted by) the regular workforce. Since 1974, while the CGT’s affiliates have fallen by two-thirds, its central staff has increased fivefold. “It’s a bureaucracy whose sole goal is to protect itself,” Gervais said.
Despite the fierce battle currently underway over Macron’s pension reform, the reality of French labor relations is hardly in line with the stereotype of French unions constantly at war with employers and the government. Most of them benefit from material resources provided by the companies where they are present, leading to worries about their representatives’ independence and bargaining power. And while the French do stage walkouts more than almost any other country in Europe, a French private sector worker goes on strike barely one day every 17 years on average.
Feeling they aren’t being properly represented by trade unions, France’s have-nots have found other ways to channel their discontent. The surge of the far-right National Rally party has been largely fueled by working-class votes. In 2018 and 2019, weekly “yellow vest” rallies against taxes and economic inequality often escalated into violent clashes with the police.
At the time, Macron was quick to scrap the fuel tax hike that had originally triggered the demonstrations. Now, should the unions fail to stop the government’s pension reform, some worry that more violent forms of protest could make a comeback.
“It may have a radicalizing effect, with some workers deciding that nothing can be achieved by playing nice and they should do like the yellow vests—smash everything up,” said Jean-Dominique Simonpoli, a former branch leader at CGT and president of La Fabrique du Social, a consultancy that aims to facilitate labor relations.
French unions are also extremely fragmented, with eight main organizations competing for members, influence, and resources. The two largest, the CGT and the more moderate (and even bigger) French Democratic Confederation of Labor, are on notoriously bad terms, with the former often accusing the latter of “betraying” workers by settling for minor concessions. Divisions run deep within single organizations too, often making it hard to come up with a coherent strategy. The CGT, in particular, is plagued by long-standing tensions between the more combative sections, such as the Railway Workers’ Federation, and those more open to compromise, with CGT leader Philippe Martinez coming under fire at the same time for being too soft and too hard-line.
“Managing all this is more circus art than a political exercise,” said Dominique Andolfatto, a professor of political science at the Université de Bourgogne.
Despite the bleak picture, trade unions still occupy an important place in French society. Macron may have battered them and ignored their concerns on many fronts, but he is not former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
“At company level, Macron has sought to boost the unions’ role,” Simonpoli said. Shortly after taking power, the French president imposed a new rule that forces companies to get the green light from unions representing more than half of their employees—if they want to make changes on issues like salaries or working hours.
“Macron’s intuition is that unions are more and more out of touch with workers, which is not a good thing, and we must revitalize them at the firms’ level,” said Antoine Foucher, chief of staff for Macron’s former labor minister, Muriel Pénicaud, between 2017 and 2020. Boosting unions in the canteen is one thing, but letting them decide how the central government should use its purse is another. In Macron’s view, when it comes to national reforms, “trade unions aren’t representative enough while the political power has the legitimacy of universal suffrage,” Foucher said.
With a wildly unpopular pension reform looming, union leaders beg to differ. After six weeks of nationwide strikes, they are planning to “bring France to a standstill” on March 7. For the first time in decades, all major workers’ organizations have managed to set their differences aside in a show of unity that is revitalizing the movement. It’s either the last gasp of French labor—or the beginning of a rebirth.
“Regardless of how it will end, this will have been a remarkable success for the unions,” Andolfatto said. What remains to be seen is “whether this is the beginning of a deeper shift.”
