Despite continued social protest, something quite fundamental has changed in the regulation of class relations in France. This article explores two paradoxes of this transformation. First, a dense network of institutions of social dialogue and worker representation has become implanted in French firms at the same time as trade union strength has declined. Second, the transformation has involved a relaxation of centralized labor market regulation on the part of the state, yet the French state remains a central actor in the reconstruction of the industrial relations system. Institutional reform of industrial relations could not take place without the active intervention of the state because employers and trade unions alone were unable to create durable industrial relations institutions. The collapse of trade unionism meant the need for new actors on the labor side and only the state could both create and confer legitimacy upon those new actors.
Michel Lallement, "New Patterns of Industrial Relations and Political Action Since the 1980s," in Pepper D. Culpepper, Peter A. Hall, and Bruno Palier, eds., The Politics that Markets Make: Social Change in France (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006): 50.
2.
This article builds on research begun for a chapter that involved a comparison of French and British industrial relations reform in Jonah D. Levy, ed., The State After Statism: New State Activities Among the Affluent Democracies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), and continued in a paper presented at the roundtable "La Politique et la Dynamique des Relations Professionelles" at the VIIIth Congress of L'Association Française de Science Politique, Lyon, France, September 14-16, 2005. I am grateful to the participants of both projects for searching and helpful comments on earlier drafts.
3.
Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick and Richard Hyman, "Embedded Collectivism? Workplace Representation in France and Germany," Industrial Relations Journal37, no. 5 (2006).
4.
Pierre Mathiot, "La Régulation Étatique de la Négociation Sociale ou Quand l'État Dit Encore Son Mot," in Christian Thuderoz and Annie Giraud-Héraud, eds., La Négociation Sociale (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2002).
5.
The concept of micro-corporatism comes from Wolfgang Streeck, "Neo-Corporatist Industrial Relations and the Economic Crisis in West Germany," in John H. Goldthorpe, ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1984).
6.
Jonah D.Levy, Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society, and Economy in Contemporary France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
7.
Thomas Amossé , "Mythes et Réalités De La Syndicalisation En France," Première Synthèses Informations44, no. 2 (2004): 2. See also Dominique Andolfatto, ed., Les Syndicats En France (Paris: La Documentation Française, 2004).
8.
Philippe Couton , "A Labor of Laws: Courts and the Mobilization of French Workers," Politics & Society32, no. 3 (2004).
9.
Chris Howell, "Virtual Unionism in France," in Harrick Chapman, Mark Kesselman, and Martin A. Schain, eds., A Century of Organized Labor in France (New York: St. Martin's , 1998).
10.
George Ross, Workers and Communists in France: From Popular Front to Eurocommunism (Berkeley: University of California Press , 1982).
11.
Mark Kesselman , "Socialism without the Workers: The Case of France," Kapitalistate, no. 10-11 (1983).
12.
Henri Weber, Le Parti Des Patrons (Paris: Seuil , 1986).
13.
Nicolas Barré , Philippe Reclus, and Béatrice Taupin, "Entretien" Le Figaro (July 4, 2005).
14.
Cornelia Woll , "National Business Associations Under Stress: Lessons from the French Case," West European Politics29, no. 3 (2006).
15.
Jacques Capdeville and René Mouriaux, Mai68: I'Entre-Deux De La Modernité ( Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1988).
16.
Chris Howell, Regulating Labor: The State and Industrial Relations Reform in Postwar France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).
17.
Chris Howell , "The Dilemmas of Post-Fordism: Socialists, Flexibility and Labor Market Deregulation in France," Politics & Society20, no.1 ( 1992).
18.
Streeck, "Neo-Corporatist Industrial Relations."
19.
Olivier Mériaux , "Éléments d'un Régime Post-Fordiste de la Négociation Collective en France," Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations55, no. 4 ( 2000).
20.
David Cameron , "Colors of the Rose: On the Ambiguous Record of French Socialism," Center for European Studies Working Paper Series, 1988.
21.
Daniel Singer, Is Socialism Doomed? The Meaning of Mitterrand (New York : Oxford University Press, 1988): 189.
22.
The term comes from Levy, Tocqueville's Revenge. It includes the use of social policy to ease withdrawal from the labor market through early retirement and other incentives.
23.
Howell, Regulating Labor, ch. 7.
24.
Howell, "The Dilemmas of Post-Fordism."
25.
Michel Coffineau , Les Lois Auroux, Dix Ans Aprés ( Paris: La Documentation Française, 1993).
26.
Ibid., 93.
27.
Raymond-Pierre Bodin, Les Lois Auroux Dans Les P.M.E. (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1987): 195. Translation by the author.
28.
Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman, La Deuxiéme Gauche: Histoire Intellectuelle et Politique de la CFDT (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1982).
29.
Jean-Marie Pernot , Syndicats: Lendemains De Crise? ( Paris: Gallimard, 2005): 198.
30.
This strategy appeared to benefit the CFDT in the 1990s as it enjoyed membership growth while its main rivals shrank. But it backfired after 2003, when the union signed onto a controversial pension reform and suffered a backlash in membership losses and schisms.
31.
"Joint employer/union declaration," European Industrial Relations Review no. 255 ( 1995): 6 (no author).
32.
Udo Rehfeldt , "Social Partners Agree Common Position on Collective Bargaining Reform," European Industrial Relations Observatory Online (August 2001) available at http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2001/08/feature/fr0108163f.htm
33.
This point was made by Olivier Mériaux in a personal communication with the author, July 9, 2004.
34.
For detailed analysis, see the special issue of Droit Social no. 6 (2004). See also "Loi Sur le Dialogue Social," Le Peuple (May 17, 2004). No author.
35.
The debate over the majority principle only involves those five union confederations that have been granted legal representative status by the state. In this context, minority-or less representative-unions refers to the smallest legally recognized confederations, with few members and weak representation in workplace elections. There are also unions, and union confederations that have not been granted representative status. They mostly exist in the public sector and were formed as breakaways from established unions. The debate over their status is a somewhat different one, though clearly linked to that of the formally representative unions.
36.
Annette Jobert and Jean Saglio, La Mise en Oeuvre des Dispositions de la Loi du 4 Mai 2004 Permettant aux Entreprises de Déroger aux Accords de Branche (Paris: Ministère de l'Emploi du Travail et de la Cohésion Sociale, 2005).
37.
For a useful discussion the logic of the employee mandating procedure and its implications for worker representation, see Christian Dufour, Adelheid Hege, Catherine Vincent, and Mouna Viprey, "Le Mandatement en Question," Travail et Emploi, no. 82 (2000).
38.
For details of the legislation, see "Employment Reforms Bill," European Industrial Relations Review, no. 318 (2000). No author.
39.
For details of the legislation, see "Draft Law on Redundancies," European Industrial Relations Review, no. 372 (2005). No author.
40.
Gunnar Trumbull , "Policy Activism in a Globalized Economy: France's 35 Hour Work Week," French Politics, Culture & Society20, no. 3 ( 2002).
41.
Alan Jenkins, Employment Relations in France: Evolution and Innovation ( New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum , 2000): 165-66. Emphasis in the original.
42.
Anders Hayden , "France's 35-hour Week: Attack on Business? Win-Win Reform? Or Betrayal of Disadvantaged Workers?Politics & Society34, no. 4 (2006).
43.
"La Négociation Collective en 2003," Ministère de l'Emploi, du Travail et de la Cohésion Sociale: 111. Available at http://www.travail-solidarite.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/NC_2003.pdf
44.
Maurice Braud , "Collective Bargaining in 2002 Examined," European Industrial Relations Observatory Online. Available at http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2003/09/feature/fr0309101f.htm
45.
Hayden, "France's 35-Hour Week," 516-17.
46.
Commissariat Général du Plan, Réduction du Temps de Travail: Les Enseignements de l'Observation (Paris: La Documentation Française, 2001): chs. 4-5.
47.
For discussion of the protests against the CPE and the argument that the failure of the reforms reflected government incompetence more than an unreformable society, see George Ross, "Myths and Realities in the 2006 `Events'," French Politics, Culture & Society 24, no. 3 (2006).
48.
Thomas Amossé , "Le Dialogue Social En Entreprise" Première Synthèses Informations39, no. 1 (2006).
49.
Philippe Combault , "La Couverture Conventionelle A Fortement Progressé Entre 1997 et 2004," Première Synthèses Informations, no. 46.2 (2006): 1.
50.
Andolfatto, Les Syndicats en France, 115.
51.
The proportion of workplaces with a union delegate rose in the course of the 1990s and early 2000s to reach 38 percent in 2004 (Maria Pignoni and Elise Tenret, "Présence Syndicale," Première Synthèses Informations, no. 14.2 (2007): 2. However, the fact that this took place at the same time that union membership was falling and that the largest expansion of union delegates occurred in small firms raises questions about the strength and independence of union delegates.
52.
Olivier Jacod , "Les Institutions Représentatives du Personnel ," Première Synthèses Informations, 5.1 (2007): 2.
53.
Almost a quarter of firm-level agreements were ratified using the referendum procedure that does not require any involvement by formal employee representatives. La Négociation Collective en 2005, Ministère de l'emploi, de la cohésion sociale et du logement (Paris: 2006): 204. Available at http://www.travail-solidarite.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/NC2005_P0_-_Sommaire.pdf
54.
See the study of 27 firms reported in Dufour, Hege, Vincent, and Viprey, "Le Mandatement En Question." This evidence was expanded on in an interview with Christian Dufour, researcher at Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales conducted with the author on April 26, 2007, Paris. Also see the study of six large firms reported in Pascale Trompette and Olivier Mériaux, "Accords d'Entreprise sur l'Emploi: Quels Processus d'Échange?" La Revue de l'IRES, no. 23 (1997).
55.
IRES, Les Mutations de L'Emploi en France (Paris: La Découverte, 2005): 9-10.
56.
Trompette and Mériaux, "Accords d'entreprise sur l'emploi: quels processus d'échange?"
57.
Michel Lallement and Olivier Mériaux, "Status and Contracts in Industrial Relations, `La Refondation Sociale' a New Bottle for an old (French) Wine?" Industrielle Beziehungen10, no. 3 (2003).
58.
Mériaux has suggested that, while the social partners frequently blame the state for the weakness of collective bargaining, one could just as easily "reverse the causal schema and impute the interventionist impulse of the state to the incapacity of the `social partners'" (translation by the author), Mériaux, "Éléments d'un Régime Post-Fordiste," 614.
59.
See Pernot, Syndicats: Lendemains de Crise? and Jean-Pascal Higelé, "Représentivité Syndicale et Accords Interprofessionnels Nationaux: Les Enjeux d'une Réforme," Droit Social, no. 3 (2007). In early 2008, at the urging of Sarkozy, employer associations and trade unions began discussions on new mechanisms and metrics for determining the representativeness of class organizations. The resulting agreement was signed into legislation in mid-2008.
60.
Richard Locke and Kathleen Thelen, "Apples and Oranges Revisited: Contextualized Comparisons and the Study of Comparative Labor Politics," Politics & Society23, no. 3 (1995).
61.
Peter Hall and David Soskice, eds. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
62.
Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen, eds., Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Also see Mark Vail, "Bending the Rules: Institutional Analysis, Political Change and Labor-Market Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies ," Comparative Politics (forthcoming).
63.
See the contributions to Levy, ed., The State After Statism.
64.
See the argument made in ch. 2 of Chris Howell, Trade Unions and the State: The Construction of Industrial Relations Institutions in Britain, 1890-2000 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
65.
See the introductory chapter of Streeck and Thelen, eds., Beyond Continuity.
