Professor of political science at the University of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté and co-author of the book Anatomy of trade unionism (PUG, 2021), Dominique Andolfatto analyzes the reasons why the collective of controllers, at the origin of the strike at the SNCF, was born outside of any trade union framework.
The strike movement at the SNCF is on the initiative of a collective of controllers outside the unions. Does this mean that the representative organizations of railway workers are overwhelmed?
This shows that traditional organizations are too institutional or bureaucratic, which no longer allows them to carry the demands of groups who consider themselves poorly integrated or wronged. There is already a fundamental problem with the union organization, which is not always in phase with the sociological profile of the personnel. Then there is a context – which is not new – of a decline in membership: trade union establishments have been reduced and direct links with employees have been distended. Finally, the “French-style” social dialogue is heavy, very formatted, very formalized – even more in a company such as the SNCF – and, therefore, the basic employees, with their particular problems, can have the feeling of not not be heard.
Has such a situation ever occurred at the SNCF? And beyond that, in other companies or sectors of the world of work?
At the origin of the great movement of the winter of 1986-1987, there was already a group of railway workers. There was talk then of a “coordination” of railway workers and it was the CFDT which had agreed to file the strike notice. The reasons – like today – were working conditions and wages. The CGT was initially hostile to such a move, so as not to disrupt the Christmas holidays. But given the success of the movement, the unions will rally very quickly. This did not translate less also – at his departure – a more or less deaf criticism of the unions and announced a few years later the birth of a new union, more “basist”: SUD-Rail.
In social history, conflicts often originate at the grassroots. These are spontaneous movements at the start: they escape union slogans. We saw this in the 1980s and 1990s with the nurses and assistant teachers of national education, who had also set up coordination groups. These are therefore not “push-button” strikes, that is to say strikes decided by general staffs, in reality less frequent than one might think and often less effective.
You have 55.33% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.