WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #340 - Syndicalism, an FSU that oscillates between co-management and struggle (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 More combative than the CFDT, more open to social issues than FO, allied

to the CGT and Solidaires, but also very institutionalized, the Unitary
Trade Union Federation (FSU) embodies an ambivalent trade unionism, more
capable of following than of instigating struggles. This was felt in his
action in the pension defense movement. ---- The FSU, which organizes
exclusively in the public service, is less known than the large
traditional confederations CGT, FO or CFDT. Founded in 1993, it is the
result of a left split from the National Education Federation (FEN,
which has since become Unsa-Education). The FSU has 160,000 members, 90%
in National Education. In this sector, the FSU has no less than 10
different unions : one for primary school employees, one for secondary
school, one for higher education, one for professional high schools, one
for sports teachers (! ), administrators, school nurses, inspection
staff, etc. This complex structure, separating employees according to
their professions, makes the influence of the FSU less visible, but it
also generates corporatist reflexes that do not favor unity and the
extension of struggles. However, the FSU claims to be a trade unionism
of social transformation, even if it remains rather vague in its
objectives. And in fact, we often find the signature of the FSU - more
often than its militant forces to tell the truth - in interpro
struggles, but also feminist, LGBTI, ecologists, antifascists,
antiracists, against all-security, etc. To this first paradox - a
corporatism combined with interprofessional and societal concerns - is
added that of union action itself. The FSU has one foot in service
unionism, and another in struggles. It oscillates between the two
according to the spirit of the times, but also according to the weight
of the tendencies which act (statutory) within it. The most combative
are the Emancipated School tendency and, more modestly, the Emancipation
tendency, which defends a revolutionary and unitary trade unionism and
debates pedagogical questions. The FSU, even if it occupied a relatively
discreet place in the social movement on pensions, seemed at ease within
the intersyndicale. Not very surprising for this somewhat patchwork
organization. If its colors were represented everywhere in the
departmental intersyndicales and in the demonstrations, its real work on
the ground was most disparate: here the FSU remained a disembodied
signature, there its activists played a positive role in the GAs of
strikers favoring self-organization, and participated in blockades. In
recent years, the FSU has intensified its work with the CGT and to a
lesser extent with Solidaires, in a pole that it qualifies as " struggle
and social transformation unionism ". The question of a possible
unification of this pole occupied an important place in its last
congress. Will the unitary struggle movement that we have just gone
through accentuate this line?

Gil (UCL Montpellier)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?une-FSU-qui-oscille-entre-la-cogestion-et-la-lutte
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