Ahead of France’s legislative elections, unions and employers make their voices heard

5 months ago 13

Ahead of the legislative elections on 30 June and 7 July, French trade unions are divided over what strategy to adopt in the face of the rise of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), while major employers seem wary of the promises made by the left and the right.

For the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), which had 640,000 members in 2022, the matter is settled: The union must mobilise all its forces to prevent the RN from coming to power.

“We’re in an unprecedented context, our republic and our democracy are in danger; at times like these, the CGT always assumes its responsibilities,” Sophie Binet, the movement’s national secretary, explained on BFM TV.

On 18 June, the central federation clarified its unprecedented position when the heads of its federations and departmental unions voted to support the candidates of the new leftist alliance, Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP).

Accusing the RN of being “the party of lies”, Binet confirmed that the project put forward by the left and the far left was the one that “best responds to the aspirations of the working world and allows us to have winning mobilisations”.

While the CGT openly supports the NFP, it is not giving any voting instructions to its members, who are “old enough to think for themselves”.

Also opposed to the RN are the Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT), the Union nationale des syndicats autonomes (Unsa), the Union syndicale Solidaires and the Fédération syndicale unitaire (FSU), which demonstrated with the CGT and left-wing parties across France on 15 June, gathering 250,000 people in the streets.

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Conversely, some central labour bodies are adopting a more nuanced stance.

The CFTC, another major confederation of trade unions, had called for a blocking of the far right in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, but is this time refraining from giving any voting instructions, a CFTC source told Euractiv.

“The impact of voting instructions is fantasised: employees don’t always adhere to a union’s ideological corpus”, the same source said.

Around 16% of CFTC members voted for the RN in the European elections in June, compared to 32% the party gathered at the national level, according to internal data. The union may clarify its position at its Confederal Council meeting on June 26.

Force Ouvrière (FO), another union, said it has “no intention of interfering in the political debate, which belongs to the citizens “, as the movement’s executive committee, meeting in Valence on 13 June, stated.

In a press release, the union made no mention of any party “in keeping with the tradition of inter-union independence”.

Employers’ organisations call for clarification

France’s employers’ associations are also keeping a close eye on the forthcoming elections and their impact on the world of work.

On Thursday (20 June), the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (Medef), the Confédération des Petites et Moyennes Entreprises (CPME), the Union des Entreprises de Proximité (U2P), and the Mouvement des Entreprises de Taille Intermédiaire (METI) invited representatives of the political parties competing in the legislative elections to Paris.

On the agenda: wage increases, tax pressure, the state of public spending, pension reform, housing policy and energy policy.

Two speeches were particularly eagerly awaited: those of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), and the Rassemblement National (RN) and its allies from the Les Républicains (LR).

The NFP, for example, would like to see an additional tax effort on private wealth and multinationals, without touching the tax framework for SMEs. RN’s Jordan Bardella, on the other hand, believes production taxes are too high and wants to kill the corporate tax based on companies’ added value while keeping overtime tax-free.

In an interview with Le Figaro, Medef president Patrick Martin made it clear that, in the current context, Medef was keen to point out the “dangers” of promises made by both the NFP and RN.

“We’re very concerned about certain economic measures, at a time when public finances are under great strain, international competition is strong and the economy is sluggish. This is the worst time to embark on perilous adventures: the country is already fragile enough,” he declared.

“I repeat, the RN programme is dangerous for the French economy, growth and employment, and that of the Nouveau Front Populaire is just as dangerous, if not more so,” he told Le Figaro.