#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #FRANCE #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #France, UCL AL #335 - Syndicalism, CGT Congress: Reflections on the orientation document (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The 53rd Congress of the CGT will be less the collective elaboration of the

unions than a decisive confrontation between the supporters of a certain openness
and those of a step back. If the neo-Stalinism of the latter is worrying, the
weaknesses of the former are not reassuring. ---- The nostalgics have a good time
attacking the political weakness of the document presented by the outgoing
leadership: no in-depth analysis of the acute crisis of capitalism, bland
formulation around the "overcoming of capitalism". But in truth, the two camps
share a deferral of political tasks to parties that "would be quick to legislate
social progress laws". Common program, the return?
The strong points of the text hardly propose a revolution but confirm recent and
positive developments: monitoring against sexist and sexual violence in the CGT,
joint work with associations and NGOs in particular "Never again". We find there
the concern for the widest possible trade union unity going as far as the
unification of the trade unionism of struggle, in particular with the FSU, but
without forgetting to mention Solidaires. It should be noted that in the
proposals on the energy mix to get out of carbon energies, nuclear power is not
mentioned as such.

Trade union structures, the return?
In a tenacious tradition of hunting down "entryists" and movements that go beyond
bureaucracies, articles 492 and 493 of the orientation document are particularly
obscure. If the Yellow Vests are cited, without any analysis, mysterious
unidentified "collectives" are pointed with an accusing finger. And the word
"discipline" comes up several times in the articles devoted to the operation.

The novelties are essentially to be found in the area of union structuring. Not
without sometimes the articles contradicting each other a few paragraphs later.
Let us rejoice that, in their entirety, these novelties take up proposals
formulated by revolutionary syndicalist traditions. Even if a lot of vagueness
persists, the open tracks are those which had been curtly closed during the 52nd
congress.

Thus, it is proposed a major effort to unionize apprentices without deciding
between territories and federations, that is to say without deciding between
their place of study and their place of work. A complex balance, moreover,
especially in the absence of a strong presence of the local industrial union
which could intervene. This unionization is also completely separate from the
creation of unions of salaried students whose generalization of SELA (union of
students, high school students, apprentices) is proposed on an experimental
basis, but here too , in a total blur between the intervention of SELA in places
of study and/or in places of work.

Starting from the observation that 100,000 union members are without a union, the
document finally opens the way to the greatest pragmatism, questioning the
"critical size" of a union for it to be viable. Referring to the success of
professional unions for childminders, he also mentions local, departmental,
regional or national unions. Even if the word industrial union is never written,
it seems that it is not formally excluded to move forward on this path which
allows activists from large companies in a profession to concretely support union
life. in the smallest in a given territory, and to return to the sources of
revolutionary unionism.

Jean-Yves (UCL Limousin)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Congres-de-la-CGT-Reflexions-sur-le-document-d-orientation
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