Renewal In The French Trade Union Movement

Drawing on ethnographic research in the breakaway trade union movement Fédération des Syndicats Solidaires, Unitaires et Démocratiques (SUD), this book explores broad questions of trade union renewal in France. The SUD movement emerged in 1988 with the avowed intention to revitalise French trade unionism. Since its emergence the movement has increasingly been cited as a prime instigator of social unrest in France. In a wider context of union decline in Europe, this research considers to what extent and in what ways SUD has been able to develop and sustain collective organisation, identity and mobilisation. Research was conducted in a local-level union of SUD-Rail, a union which emerged in the French public railway sector in 1996 from an ideological split within one of France's largest trade union confederations, the Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT). From an ethnographic perspective, the book contributes a thick description of trade unionism at the local level and, drawing on social movement theory, analyses activists' attempts to confront and renew practices and structures in trade unionism. The book evaluates the success of the SUD movement and the prospects for a more sustained renewal of French trade unionism.

This book is based on careful historical analysis and personal observation. Dr. Lorwin has broken his material down under three main headings: first, an abbreviated history of the origins and development of French unionism through 1944; second, a close examination of the critical years 1944-53, which saw the reunification in the Confédération Générale du Travail of the Communists purged in 1940, and the subsequent bolt of the anti-Communists to form the Confédération Générale du Travail-Force Ouvrière; and, third, an analysis of the international life of French unions, their bargaining techniques, their structure, and their goals. While the discussion in the first two parts of the book is significant, the major contribution to knowledge is in the third section. An extremely valuable analysis for those who are concerned with the nature of French unionism, students of political behavior, and particularly to those who are engaged in discriminating between institutional myths and institutional realities.

First published in 1984. This volume brings together many of the foremost French and North American specialists on the French working class movement. Although they differ substantially in their theoretical and ideological orientation, they share a left perspective. Their original essays provide a coherent and comprehensive analysis of the history of the movement, focusing on the constraints and opportunities created by the economic crisis of the 1970s and the political change ushered in by the Socialist Party’s victory in 1981.

In February of 1996, Columbia University and New York University marked the centennial of the French labor movement by jointly sponsoring a conference to reflect on the history of this movement and on the future prospects for trade unionism in France. A Century of Organized Labor in France is a collection of papers presented at that conference, written by distinguished historians and social scientists from both France and the United States, as well as by important French trade union leaders. Offering an interdisciplinary approach that is rare among studies on this subject, this volume examines the trajectory of the French labor movement and provides rich lessons for students of contemporary France, Western European politics and society, and comparative labor movements.