WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #338 - Syndicalism, CGT: An unprecedented congress, and after? (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Everything has been said about the unprecedented and violent nature of the 53rd

Congress of the CGT. And its surprise outcome with the election of Sophie Binet
as general secretary. Rebuilding political compromises, stabilizing a collegial
leadership, revitalizing grassroots union structures, advancing on feminist
issues and those of the climate emergency: the challenges are numerous for the
one who owes her election to the announced clash between two blocs of equal
forces. The paradox being that a woman, young, executive, passed by the PS and
the UNEF owes her election to the offensive of the archaeo-Stalinist networks!
---- The confederal congress is supposed to be the union congress. But through
the grouping of small private unions of direct delegates, the selection of
delegates with double validation by the professional federation and the
departmental union, to which is added the confiscation of union members "
isolated" without a home union by the federal leadership, the congress is in fact
a battle between bureaucrats who manipulate most of the mandates at their
disposal as they please.

The sociological criteria imposed on delegations (young people, women,
executives, workers, etc.) thus complete a picture which means that more than 70%
of delegates attend their first congress, and that they are often in difficulty.
to grasp the issues at stake in the debates, which are also subject to pressure
from their heads of delegation. The worst being that most of them have never met
the union members whose voices they carry !

The vast majority of union members completely ignore the congress and the votes
do not necessarily correspond to the real internal balances, nor the debates to
the real problems of the activists on the ground. All this leaves, each time, the
bitter taste of a confiscated debate.

The balance sheet of the Martinez period
The negative vote on the activity report (50.3% against) will permanently mark
the balance sheet of Philippe Martinez's eight years at the head of the CGT. A
CGT that seems broken in two. Despite a solitary management of the function by
Martinez, the balance sheet of the eight years is not the balance sheet of one
man but of an entire organization. The professional federations in the forefront
against the balance sheet are more responsible for their electoral setbacks than
Martinez himself! And the vertical and authoritarian management of the structures
is not the prerogative of the only ex-secretary general...

The attack on the unitary strategy seems unfair. As if everyone had forgotten the
calamitous "gathered trade unionism" which had put the CGT in tow of the CFDT in
2010 and its thirteen days of action spread over a year. We were not then a crowd
to protest and to carry the need to go on a renewable strike !

The break with this orientation was formalized at the 52nd Dijon Congress in 2019
in Martinez's introductory report, which underlined the need to seek the broadest
possible unity without selling off the autonomy of the CGT. And this is what was
done in 2023 with an inter-union motivated on close days and explicitly
supporting the sectors on renewable strike. A more frank call for a renewable
general strike would hardly have been more effective, alas.

Between heated debates and unexpected compromises, the 53rd Congress of the CGT
marks the beginning of decisive years for militant trade unionism.
Credit: CGT
The balance sheets on feminism and ecology are more complex to draw. On the one
hand, the confederal leadership really impelled internally and in unity the
feminist strike of March 8; it also set up the monitoring unit against sexist and
sexual violence. But the waltz-hesitation around the exclusion of Benjamin Amar
from the Confederal Executive Commission (CEC), and the absence of a public
position in other cases of aggressors, is akin to a lack of firmness, even a
opportunistic acceptance of a process without strong political support.

Unfortunately, the same was true for the creation of "Never Again" (PJC).
Certainly, the general policy orientation of previous congresses carried a
mandate on these issues. But the terribly solitary choice of building this
alliance, without consultation with the ad-hoc confederal commission, planted a
definitive thorn in the side of the initiative. History will perhaps tell us that
only a forceful transition was possible in the face of the productivist and
pro-nuclear resistance that is very much alive in the CGT. But then was it wise?
And even if it means pushing through, why not give any serious, human, political
and financial resources to the development of the Ecological and Social Alliance
(ex-PJC) when structures, in particular departmental unions, have seized
effectiveness of the approach in their territories?  Here again, the lack of
firmness, beyond the emblematic and highly publicized Chapelle-Darblay file
(whose success is largely due to the tenacity of the leaders of the company)
suggests a more opportunistic choice, in the zeitgeist, so many deep convictions.

A motley opposition
There is indeed an opposition built in fraction, with its newsletter "CGT Unit"
and whose funding should be questioned. It brings together the nostalgic sectors
of Stalinism, of a working class mythologized and frozen in the past and which,
on the international level, demands membership of the WFTU (so well denounced
during the congress by the intervention of the Iranian trade unionist) . Counting
on a "pro-WSF" amendment, it still weighs around 30% of the mandates. But much
less in the real CGT where these debates are generally non-existent and
misunderstood, the indifference of union members being moreover a symptom of the
general depoliticization with which we cannot be satisfied. Olivier Mateu,
secretary of the UD of Bouches-du-Rhône was the official candidate for the
direction of the CGT. His strange obstinacy in not respecting the rule of parity
of candidatures costs him an entry to the CEC.

A circumstantial alliance was forged between this current and the productivist
and pro-nuclear sectors giving the congress this vision of a CGT cut in two. But
the latter were careful not to defend the candidacies of the "CGT Unit" current
at the CEC, too happy to appear as the representatives of a "radical" wing
without encumbering themselves with the caricatural and unbearable positions of
the archaeo-Stalinists. Thus, the secretary of the Federation of Chemistry does
not have more access to the CEC, which is more debatable in view of the lively
struggles in this branch.

The bourgeois press quickly characterized an opposition between supposed
"radicals" and "reformists". Let's say bluntly that we contest this political
classification. How to qualify militants who have not integrated the basics of
Marxist analyzes as radicals. As for the commodity cycle leading to
overproduction and the determination to lower the value of labor power? This is
exactly the exhaustion of nature that is leading us all, scientists say, towards
a major ecological disaster. As well as a race to lower labor costs that leads us
to relocations, misery, war. We will not let the activists who, despite their
efforts, have failed to engage in a renewable strike, be called "reformists".

The new general secretary of the CGT, Sophie Binet, photographed here at the
demonstration on April 13, 2023.
Credit: Daniel Maunoury
PC everywhere, justice nowhere
Neither the differences of orientation, nor the quarrels of leaders are new to
the CGT. Except that before, everything was settled within the leadership of the
PCF in a globally accepted discipline. But activists from the mould, or still
members of the PCF, today find themselves spread across all CGT currents and
clans. Including in the movement that supported Marie Buisson, even if she also
paid not to "be in it". To completely close the long Stalinist parenthesis, the
CGT will have to reinvent its own places of debate and decision-making.

And now?
The CGT comes out of this congress injured and the future is uncertain: the
leadership crisis can rebound at any time like major political rifts. Will those
who are attached to their old house know how to rebuild the collective and make
progress on questions of unification, in particular with the FSU whose goodwill
is cooled by the spectacle of the 53rd congress? Will they and they be able to
build a roadmap that links class struggle, ecology and feminism?

One thing is certain: nothing solid will emerge without rebuilding viable unions
on clear perimeters. Enough of company micro-unions which rely on two comrades of
good will who must manage the claims, the Economic Social Committee, and Cogétise
(system of distribution of contributions between the different structures)!
Enough union members without a union.

In some situations, national unions may be a solution. But the answer to the
isolated, to the precarious, to the small companies remains the territorial
professional union which allows a perennial activity, a support of proximity of
the strong unions to the weak within the same branch. Unions that have the means
to animate the union debates, to forge positions and to come up with real
mandates from the base at the 54th congress.

Jean-Yves (UCL Limousin)

Find a daily verbatim of the Congress sessions on the site
Communisteslibertairescgt.org.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?CGT-Un-congres-inedit-et-apres
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