Can the political left and the unions walk hand in hand? This relationship between political parties and trade unions has been able to fluctuate throughout history, and the question arises again, at the end of this week, after a March against high prices on Sunday 16 October, organized by the left, after a strike day Tuesday 18, organized by the unions and in the wake of Wednesday, this meeting between the parties of the NUPES and then the unions. The decryption of sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: While common battles are announced in the weeks, in the months to come, can this lead to a convergence of social and political struggles?
John Viard: I do not think so. First, all the unions are not there, the main unions, the CFDT did not participate in these movements, the CFTC and the CGT either. So you have to be careful. I believe it’s a guerrilla phenomenon which is entering the culture of our society, we have minority fights, but which want to say things, but at the same time, somewhere, we have given that, the majority unions sign an agreement at TotalEnergies and the minority refuses it.
But why do you say, guerrilla?
It’s not crowds, we’re not putting 1 million people in the street, we’re not in a mass balance of power between capital and labour, to go back to the usual themes. We are in phenomena that are carried on places that block society.
Transport has always been at the heart of social struggles. 30 years ago, it was the SNCF, when the CGT-SNCF and RATP got into the fight, we knew it was going to win. Afterwards, we had the truckers’ war in the early 90s, 92, 96, because the transport of goods, in particular those affecting businesses, had actually taken place in the truck. Afterwards, we had the big fights in the air industry and today, I would say that we are in a fight in the oil sector. But still they have the key like the others had the key before.
So all these demands are made both by political parties and then also by trade unions, but with different roles and means of action that are sometimes even opposed. Is a rapprochement possible or would it be surprising?
In the last elections, workers voted 50% Rassemblement National in the first round, 20% for NUPES, and in the second round, 65% of workers voted for Rassemblement National. These are the rates we had 40 years ago for the Communist Party. The working class has always been protesting. It’s a bit normal. It is the part of society that often works the hardest, that has the feeling of being exploited more than the others.
So that’s where the heart of social protest has always been, but the forms have changed, because we went from a Communist Party which was very organized, and which structured the CGT – we recall that the secretary general of the CGT was still a member of the Communist Party and a member of the Communist Party office – indeed a different system, where there are much more power relations, that’s why I call it guerrilla warfare, social punches.
We can generally recall the low rate of trade unionism in France around 10%, it is much higher in the Scandinavian countries, 70% on average, but even on a European scale, we are around 20 to 25% of the rate of unionism. Can the weak politicization in France explain this lack of commitment?
In England, for example, Labor relies on the Trade-Unions, they are members of the leadership of the political party. We have the same thing in Germany, where there is a structural link between the union and the Social Democratic Party. And in the Scandinavian countries, you have countries where the benefits of the struggles only benefit union members.
This is to say that the French system is a system of extraordinary freedom where there is no longer any organic link between the political parties and the trade unions, so it is true that afterwards there are historical links. there was the historical link between the CGT and the Communist Party, that between FO and the Socialist Party, and also at FO, the Trotskyists who are often very well represented. The CFDT comes from the parties of the Catholic movements, since at the beginning it was a Christian union, and that it ceased to be with the break with the CFTC. But in France, these are cultural links and they are not obligatory administrative links. But after, the rate of unionization, if we remove all that, I don’t think there are very clear effects.