The CFE-CGC acquired a new president on Wednesday June 10, Christelle Thieffinne, during its 39th congress which saw its predecessor François Hommeril bow out with a vitriolic speech against the executive.
Christelle Thieffinne, who was the only candidate, is part of the continuity of the three mandates served by the outgoing president. This 54-year-old engineer, from the Metallurgy Federation, spent most of her career at Thales AVS, on the Vendôme site (Loir-et-Cher). It received the votes of 610 congress delegates, while 91 abstained.
“I want to make the CFE-CGC the third trade union organization in this country,” declared Christelle Thieffinne from the podium of the congress, before the vote on her candidacy, while the union is gaining members, in particular thanks to a growing share of executives in the active population.
The fourth French trade union organization following FO, the management union is on the rise, particularly thanks to the increase in the share of managers in the active population. The number of members increased from 150,850 in 2018-2019 to 168,098 in 2024, according to the union’s treasurer, Farida Karad, who noted “a more marked feminization” of the organization, while the share of female trainees trained by the union increased over the same period from 22% to 33%.
Christelle Thieffinne said she hoped that her organization “will be able to weigh in to avoid having everything and anything” in the programs of the presidential candidates in 2027. But she indicated that “if the RN were elected”, “we would go to meet such a government”. “Tomorrow, whether it is them or another political party, which comes to cut into employee rights or union rights in particular, they will find us,” she said.
Since 2023, the new president has been national secretary for social protection of the management confederation. In this capacity, she participated in the 2025 retirement conclave. She is also a member of the Retirement Orientation Council and administrator of Agirc-Arrco (supplementary pensions). She will be assisted by William Viry-Allemoz, the former secretary general of CFE-CGC Énergie, who becomes secretary general, while Farida Karad, who comes from Matmut, remains treasurer.
“Imbecile ministers”
With the election of Christelle Thieffinne, three of the five representative unions at the inter-professional level are now led by women, after the accessions in 2023 of Sophie Binet to the head of the CGT and Marylise Léon to that of the CFDT. Christelle Thieffinne indicated to the press that like her predecessor she would remain attached to union unity, while respecting the differences of each organization.
“The CFE-CGC will be in the inter-union, there is no doubt, no mystery on this question,” she affirmed alongside the other union leaders who traveled to Strasbourg to attend the congress. “I want to thank Emmanuel Macron and Patrick Martin (president of Medef, Editor’s note) who unite us,” quipped Sophie Binet, while Marylise Léon estimated that union unity “can reconcile a lot of citizens with collective action.”
In a speech on his ten years at the head of the management union, François Hommeril launched a virulent attack against political leaders and the executive. “The drama of our time is that politics has put itself at the service of the markets, where it should supervise them, and protect society from their inextinguishable desire to expand to infinity, the only admissible horizon of their profits,” he denounced.
“Then came Macronism, the apotheosis of renunciation,” he continued to the boos of the delegates, recounting “public research abandoned to its miserable budgets, the Labor Code trashed, the staff representative bodies dismantled.” “I have seen imbecile ministers, sometimes including the first of them, incapable of understanding anything of what they are supposed to command,” asserted François Hommeril, to long applause.
Asked about her own pugnacity, Christelle Thieffinne for her part assured that she would oppose bad political decisions, while indicating that she would have “a vocabulary or a way of expressing yourself that is necessarily different” from her predecessor.
