WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #346 - .Culture, Read Karel Yon: Trade unionism is political: Strategic questions for union renewal (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

Trade unionism is political: the great social movement for our pensions
has just demonstrated this. By bringing to the forefront the realities
of work, the strike, inter-professional solidarity, the unions have
initiated a dynamic of politicization of the working classes... ---- It
is a proven fact: trade unionism is increasingly found more powerless
after decades of neoliberalism which have considerably reduced its room
for maneuver, in businesses and in society. ---- The power plants having
chosen integration into management were able to realize this during the
last social movement, facing a "neoliberal wall". Increasingly, unions
have seen themselves transformed into organizations of mandated, expert
and disconnected from employees.

In Unionism is political: strategic questions for union renewal, Karel
Yon and 7 other researchers predict a repoliticization of unionism. This
would partly involve participation in a new popular front, supporting
and using the State to regain legitimacy, in the field of production of
course, but also in democracy as a whole.

This proposal, although far from the revolutionary trade unionist
strategy of our organization, offers questions and subjects for debate.

Sociological analyzes make it possible to justify common proposals. A
chapter on the Yellow Vest movement and its relationship with trade
unionism shows the capital interest of sociability in a political
perspective for a large section of the proletariat (employees of small
businesses, hospital civil servants, etc.), justifying then a
development of local unions on the model of labor exchanges.

If most of the protest aspect developed in this book would, even if it
comes from an alliance with the left-wing parties and the need for a
balance of power, these proposals are an opportunity to highlight a
proven lack perspectives for trade unionism and to propose medium-term
objectives.

The socio-historical critique of our organizations highlights subjects
on which we cannot remain without answers, such as knowledge of the
company, orientations in production, reforms of a pseudo "social
dialogue", the impossibility of being able to claim to take back control
of the production apparatus or simply even worker control, the inability
to link together the ecological transition and union action, the
contradiction between necessary integration of the female proletariat
and virilist tradition or even masculinist in the unions.

One chapter deals with the consideration of sexist and sexual violence
in trade unionism (still not achieved everywhere). It highlights the
necessary work that still remains to be done to open unionism to the
extent of the class it claims to represent.

Based on an analysis of current dynamics during the 2023 retirement
movement, having shown that unionism, when brought together, is capable
of becoming the spokesperson for a class, the work therefore offers
fragments reflections on the direction that organizations recording an
increase in unionization could take.

Judi (UCL Caen)

Karel Yon (dir.), Trade unionism is political: Strategic questions for
union renewal, Éditions La dispute, September 2023, 204 pages, 16 euros.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Karel-Yon-Le-syndicalisme-est-politique-Question-strategiques-pour-un
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