W. Rand Smith

Unemployment and the Left Coalition in France and Spain

This article compares how recent Socialist governments in France and Spain addressed the policy dilemmas and political dynamics of unemployment. Despite contrasting initial approaches to unemployment, the governments of Francois Mitterrand and Felipe Gonzalez eventually adopted economic approaches emphasizing business profitability and investment over the reduction of unemployment, while at the same time enacting measures to cushion the shock for unemployed and displaced workers. This policy proved controversial, as the unemployment issue undermined the cohesion of the Left political coalition on three levels: within the Socialist parties themselves, between the Socialists and other Left parties, and between the Socialist parties and their allies in the labour movement. The pattern of those divisions differed between France and Spain, however, creating contrasting political dynamics. In France, the chief conflicts occurred within the Socialist Party (PS) and between the PS and its ally, the French Communist Party, whereas in Spain the principal disputes were between the government and organized labour. The article examines the origins and implications of these conflicts within the Left coalitions

The Left’s Response to Industrial Crisis: Restructuring in the Steel and Automobile Industries

Industrial firms — the locus of both capitalist exploitation and heroic class struggles — were a natural focus for the Left’s economic plans in 1981. Through such measures as nationalization of large firms and banks, the Left planned to use industrial policy to boost immediate investment as well as reshape economic structures. For many on the Left, such reforms also implied that new institutions at the firm and corporate-group levels would empower employees and their unions.

The Local Union and the Workers: Mobilising Discontent

Working-class support is the goal of any trade-union movement, but nowhere is such support more crucial than in France. Given the relative lack of institutionalised relationships between labour and management, organised labour’s power depends to a large extent on its ability to represent and speak for the mass of workers. This ability depends, in turn, on the union’s capacity to mobilise workers. As Alfred Grosser has pointed out: ‘The power [of unions] to mobilise supporters constitutes an essential criterion of their representativeness: many strikes and demonstrations are undertaken solely to exhibit the influence and therefore the representativeness of the group that organises them.’1

‘Crisis’ in the French Labour Movement Reconsidered

This study has sought to explain CGT and CFDT behaviour at the grassroots level, that is within the individual firm. I have focused on the local level primarily because of dissatisfaction with the dominant scholarly approach to the French labour movement, which has emphasised national-level organisation. This approach has many virtues, especially the identification of general confederation strategies — how they are perceived and translated into concrete action by militants and constituent unions. In so doing, this approach has tended to slight important recent trends in French industrial relations at the firm level: the growth of organised labour’s institutional foothold (if not enhanced power) in terms of union rights and plant committee participation, and new management strategies to ‘contain’ unions, to name just two. Finally, the dominant approach has little to say about union organisational life beyond national headquarters, thus providing a highly static view of unions as complex organisations.

Inside the Local Union: Explaining Organisational Growth and Decline

The previous chapter proceeded on the assumption that to understand the union’s decision-making processes one needs first to comprehend the motivations, behaviour and perceptions of its leadership group, the militants. In order to comprehend fully the decision-making processes which help determine local union strategy, however, one must also examine the union’s organisational life. This is the purpose of this chapter: to understand the internal dynamics of local unions, especially how militants work together and determine strategy. Our ultimate goal is to account for the evolution of local unionism by identifying the factors that make for organisational growth and decline.

The Local Union and Management: Between Accommodation and Revolt

The local union must influence — and in turn is influenced by — not only its working-class constituency and other unions, but also a third group: management. This group is clearly the most important target of the union, in that unless the union can extract (or be widely perceived as extracting) sufficient benefits from management, workers will view the union as ineffective. Lack of worker support for a given union implies, in turn, weakness of that union in competing (or co-operating) with other unions. Extracting benefits from management is no easy matter, however, given the state of ideological warfare that has traditionally existed between labour and management.

Grassroots’ Unionism in Grenoble: Four Firms

The Alpine city of Grenoble, situated in a plain at the confluence of the Isere and Drac rivers and surrounded by three mountain chains, is a rich site for the study of local unionism for two principal reasons. First, Grenoble has a modern, dynamic economy, with numerous firms in high-technology industries such as electronics and nuclear engineering. During the 1960s, a period of brisk expansion, Grenoble’s metropolitan population increased by over 25 per cent, from 253 000 to 317 000. This growth has been facilitated by close ties between local industry and the University of Grenoble, which has fostered industrial research and new styles of management.1 Grenoble may be said, then, to presage certain aspects of French economic development, hence the French economy of the future.2 At the same time, Grenoble has numerous older industries, dating from the early part of this century. Thus Grenoble possesses a full, diversified economy within a context manageable from a local-level perspective.

The Union Militant: Roots of Union Activism

In beginning this analysis of CGT and CFDT militants I make an explicit assumption: to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous saying about the rich, French union militants are different from the mass of workers and union rank-and-file members. They are different primarily in that they spend many hours in organisational activities that often will block, if not harm, their advancement as workers. Militants pass much of that time confronting management with workers’ problems and complaints. They do so reimbursed only for a specified number of work hours lost, and in many instances work beyond their ‘delegated’ hours, receiving no compensation at all. Theirs is not a life of glory, praise and comfort. What motivates them?

CGT-CFDT Relations: ‘Conflictual Unity’?

As the preceding chapter revealed, the two most powerful unions, the CGT and CFDT, often co-operate during the course of strikes, forming joint strike committees, setting common demands and bargaining together with management. On the other hand, these two unions are much less likely to form working coalitions with the ‘moderate’ unions — FO, CTFC, and CGC.1 There are several practical reasons for CGT-CFDT co-operation. First, as these militants admit, and other research demonstrates, ‘unity of action’ (unite d’action) between the CGT and CFDT enhances their effectiveness. Individually, the two unions possess limited capacity to mobilise workers and confront management from a position of strength. Together, however, they are much better able to attract worker support, control strike action, and wrest concessions from management.2 The CGT and CFDT, moreover, often co-operate because workers demand it. Militants of both unions assert that workers complain about union division, constantly asking them, ‘Why don’t you guys get together?’ Finally these unions co-operate frequently out of their common ideological opposition to capitalism.