no united front between LFI and the unions

With more than a million demonstrators in the streets, the demonstrations on Thursday January 19 were an undeniable success for the unions. But these would undoubtedly have been able to gather even more widely if they had been able to call for demonstrations this Saturday.

“We never choose the date at random to start a social movement,” explains a former trade unionist. If you want to have people, you have to aim for Saturday, to gather as many people as possible. If you want a high rate of strikers, then it is better to plan a day of the week, when the strike is effective… ”

The date of Saturday January 21 had been pre-empted by La France insoumise (LFI) which plans that day, two days before the presentation of the pension reform bill in the Council of Ministers, a “march for pensions”.

“What am I getting drunk with the Amiens charter! »

A way to “double” them little appreciated by union officials who do not hear that politicians – and in the first place LFI – interfere in the representation of employees.

This independence of the unions vis-à-vis politics is an old story, laid down as a principle by the charter of Amiens adopted in 1906 by the 9th congress of the CGT. Which has striven, in recent decades, to mark a certain distance vis-à-vis the Communist Party to which it was historically close.

A positioning that annoys Jean-Luc Mélenchon. “What am I getting drunk with the Amiens charter! It’s 116 years old, even I’m not 116 years old “, had launched, in September 2022 at the Festival of Humanity, the one who pleads on the contrary for a “popular federation” bringing together politicians, unions and associative movements.

It is in this sense that the leader of LFI tried, without much success, to mobilize at the start of the school year, on cost of living, or even this Saturday on pensions. But he had to back down, both in the face of criticism from his Nupes allies and in the face of union unity.

Even at the CGT, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is far from unanimous

It has in fact come together around a simple watchword: “Working longer is a no-no”. But if the intersyndicale agrees to reject en bloc the decline from 62 to 64 years of the legal retirement age, all its members, in particular the reformists of the CFDT, the Unsa or the CFTC, do not share the program of the Nupes of a return to retirement at 60 years.

Even at the CGT, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is far from unanimous. His relations with Philippe Martinez have always been strained. And if 44% of union activists voted for him in the first round of the presidential election (1), this is only a relative majority, a sign that he remains divisive in the Montreuil plant.

In the trade union world, Jean-Luc Mélenchon does better than his national average in the first round (22%) only at Solidaires (51%), at the FSU (42%), at FO (29%, where he is doubled by Marine Le Pen and her 31%) and at Unsa (24%, doubled this time by Emmanuel Macron who achieves 28% there…).

Pensions: 47% of French people trust unions

In recent years, the CGT has indeed made a rapprochement with Solidaires and FSU, but this strategy of Philippe Martinez is rightly decried internally, particularly in the federations historically close to the harshest communism, suspicious of Trotskyist movements and anarchists.

Compared to LFI, the unions can nevertheless be reassured: according to a Harris Interactive poll published Wednesday evening by AEF Info and RTL, 47% of French people trust the unions to “make the right proposals” in relation to pension reform, against only 25% at Nupes, the last of the politicians behind Les Républicains (28%) and above all, the National Rally (33%). On the other hand, the French have much less confidence in the unions than in the spontaneous movements of employees to defend them (56%).

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