Explain why French trade unions, which enjoy so little support, nevertheless seem to exert considerable political influence

Résumé du document

In France, trade unions were legalised in 1884, but developed very slowly. Trade unions have never enjoyed phenomenal support in France as in the post-war period approximately 35% of workers belonged to a trade union as opposed to a mere 8-9% nowadays, which is by far the lowest proportion amongst the highly industrialised countries.
It has been noticed that since the 1970s there has been a drastic and significant drop in trade union support. It is also true that trade unions in most other European countries have suffered a decline in support and effectiveness, but the French case is most striking. Despite the difficulties arising from the contemporary situation of French society making it problematic for trade unions to find the required support, they still manage to be influential in certain fields and at particular moments of crises.

Extraits

[...] Again, in 1995 trade unions were in part responsible for Alain Madelin's resignation as Minister of Finance. In October 1995 there was a strike to protest at a pay freeze set for the following year, in which civil servants and public sector workers went on strike for twenty- four hours. All these examples show unity and brought the country to a grinding halt. December of the same year saw an attempt by the government to involve trade unions in the proposed reforms and to avoid a tense economic situation. [...]

[...] There is rarely any unity between the pluralism of trade unions, which only hinders gaining support from workers as it further divides them into smaller groups. Thus, Labbé believes that although trade union pluralism is accepted by workers relatively well, the internal rivalries spilling over into the public domain is not tolerated by members and workers generally. This is another important reason for explaining the process of deunionisation in France and a fundament factor for the loss of credibility of the central union headquarters. [...]

[...] This in turn leads to people shying away from trade unions as they are seen to be ineffective and powerless so lose their support, which only weakens their stand so we have a vicious circle situation. According to Labbé, political events have not directly influenced levels of unionisation, but have created situations where it is either more or less favourable to recruitment. Last but not least, the economic context is to be incriminated in the decrease in support for Trade Unions Globalisation and cheap labour in the Third World causes difficulties for trade unions in high wage sections of the economy. [...]

[...] It was more the idea of belonging to a particular group rather than the trade union ideology which members were interested in and the personality of the shop steward had a lot to do with how successful the recruiting process was. Nonetheless, the disappearance of these individuals, and the creation of smaller groups in the workplace able to obtain collective goods such as salary increases, improvements in hours and working conditions and so on is more effecting than in larger groups (Olson's theory) and reduces the influence and need to affiliate with a trade union explaining their decline. [...]

[...] Most left of centre parties have decided to deal with unemployment, lower wages for unskilled persons and less security. Although this helps the creation of jobs, trade unions cannot agree to this and so there is greater distance between social democratic parties and trade unions as the latter cannot afford to be considered as co-responsible for the failures of these parties' policies. Trade unions could not define themselves as opposition groups if they were publicly consorting with the government. In this way, the government and politics have created an unfavourable situation for trade union recruitment and support. [...]