The CGT and FO will not participate in the National Council for Refoundation (CNR), which is scheduled to launch this Thursday, September 8. In a letter addressed to Emmanuel Macron that france info consulted, Tuesday September 6, the CGT rejects the “new method” of the President of the Republic. “The experience of recent years has shown us that your desire to listen, repeated many times, has never materialized”, stresses the union.
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“Our democracy certainly needs to evolve so that the opinion of citizens, in the city and in businesses, is better taken into account”, recognizes the CGT. However, she points out that “tools already exist to make it progress”. She quotes as “the EESC [Conseil économique, social et environnemental] on a national level” and “the CESERs at regional level” who “have full legitimacy, by their composition, to analyze and propose alternative solutions to many problems”.
The CGT also considers that the use of the acronym CNR, the same as that of the National Council of the Resistance at the origin of major social advances put in place at the Liberation “resembles social and historical usurpation, communication that we cannot be fooled”. “The National Council of Resistance, in which leaders of the CGT largely participated, made it possible to develop a program, which bore the name ‘Happy Days'”. The resulting measures “are at odds with the program you have been carrying out since 2017 and the laws you have implemented”, says the organization.
The Force Ouvrière (FO) union also sent a letter to Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, to announce in turn that he will not participate in the CNR. “The composition of this extremely broad committee risks, in our view, diluting the voice of trade unions and weakening the role of social actors. FO considers that it has no place in such a body”, writes the secretary general of FO Frédéric Souillot.
“Force Ouvrière cannot be associated with the work of developing a shared diagnosis and/or co-constructing legislative reforms outside Parliament, he continues. FO reiterates its attachment to the separation between the political field and the trade union field and cannot be associated with a project aimed at making the union a co-legislator”.
“However, this does not mean that FO refuses to dialogue”, specifies the letter, asking Emmanuel Macron to “give back the place it deserves to collective bargaining, within the meaning of article L1 of the Labor Code”.