Unical candidate for his succession, the secretary general of the CFDT, Laurent Berger, was re-elected at the head of the first French union this Thursday, June 16. He was re-elected member of the national office by 96.68% of the votes of the congressmen. The 42 members of the national office then elected him secretary general with 100% of the votes. Aged 53, Laurent Berger has been number one in the CFDT since 2012. He has already announced that he will not complete his term. “At the CFDT, there is a rule, (to stay) around ten years, more or less two” years, he said last week. Marylise Léon, his deputy general secretary since 2018 , is expected to succeed him.
However, this re-election did not go smoothly for Laurent Berger, who suffered a snub over pensions. The delegates meeting in Lyon adopted an amendment affirming that “the increase in life expectancy does not [pouvait] not justify an increase in the average age of liquidation”, thus taking the opposite view of the initial wording. This stated that “the increase in life expectancy [pouvait] justify an increase in the average age of liquidation”.
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Widely adopted, with 67.5% of the votes cast, the amendment was presented by the Syndicat Interco de la Somme, but other unions had presented similar amendments. “We do not wish to have, in our future confederal resolution, a sentence which weakens the meaning of the rest of the text and which could even fuel an unjust reform, especially at this time”, explained to the platform the representative of the union Arnaud Espel.
The CFDT has taken a very clear position against the postponement of the legal retirement age to 65 years desired by Emmanuel Macron, but it has long defended the link between longer life expectancy and increased contribution period. The draft resolution “says nothing more… but also nothing less than what the CFDT has been saying for at least twenty years, at least since the Tours congress” of 2010, Laurent Berger explained on Wednesday at the podium.
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