Confédération générale du travail
The Confédération générale du travail ( CGT ; German General Trade Union Confederation ) is a French trade union federation that was close to the Communist Party (PCF) in the decades after the Second World War . After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Iron Curtain , relations between the CGT and the PCF loosened.
The CGT is a member of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). In the membership list of the IGB, membership is given as 676,165 (as of November 2017).
CGT General Secretary has been Philippe Martinez since February 2015 .
It was founded at a congress from September 23 to 28, 1895 in Limoges through the merger of the Fédération des bourses du travail and the Fédération nationale des syndicats .
In October 1906, the 9th Congress of the CGT passed the Amiens Charter .
Split in 1921
At the beginning of the First World War , the revolutionary syndicalist CGT was the only French trade union confederation. The increasingly profound opposition between reformists and revolutionaries and the founding of the Red Trade Union International led to a split in the organization in 1921. The moderate forces remained in the CGT; radical forces formed a new trade union confederation called Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire (CGTU).
Violent unrest on February 6, 1934, and thus deep fears of a fascist coup d'état, led from October 1934 to talks about rapprochement between the CGT and the CGTU and finally to reunification in March 1936. A little later, on May 3, 1936, the united left won the Parliamentary elections, and Léon Blum became France's first Jewish and socialist Prime Minister under the banner of the Popular Front .
1939 until the end of the war
The German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 meant that communist union members in France came under massive pressure. On September 25, 1939, three weeks after France entered the war, the CGT decided to expel all activists who refused to condemn the non-aggression pact.
By order of the Vichy regime , all union headquarters were dissolved in 1940. In 1941, there were bans on strikes and lockouts . On April 17, 1943, the re-establishment of the CGT took place in secret, which from then on supported the work of the Conseil National de la Résistance .
1945 to the present
The general strike of May 1968 , in which up to ten million workers took part at times, was largely hostile to the CGT, as the student movement of 1968 in the communist camp was viewed as essentially "bourgeois".
In November / December 1995 the CGT supported a strike by French railway workers lasting several weeks against plans by the Juppé government to reform the SNCF's pension system .
In 2006 , student protests and work stoppages, which were also supported by the CGT, prompted the Dominique de Villepin government to withdraw a law that would have made it easier to lay off first-time employees ( Contrat première embauche ).
Today (early 2016) the CGT is the second largest trade union confederation in France with around 690,000 members. Geographical focus the department Ariege in the south west of the country and the region Limousin .
See also
- Confédération française démocratique du travail (CFDT)
- Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens (CFTC)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dominique Andolfatto: L'évolution des relations CGT-PCF 1996-2003. Institut Supérieur du Travail , May 5, 2003, accessed on July 6, 2018 (French).
- ^ National Trade Union Confederations (list of member organizations). European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), accessed on July 6, 2018 .
- ^ List of Affiliated Organizations. (pdf, 2.2 MB) International Trade Union Confederation, February 6, 2018, p. 3 , accessed on July 6, 2018 (English, as of November 2017).
- ^ Stefan Simons: Fight against labor market reform: France on the barricades. In: Spiegel Online . May 26, 2016. Retrieved May 26, 2016 .